'1 


iornia 
inal 

ty 


HOUSE   HEAD 


NORMAN    BRIDGE 


10 


U^'-i  ^^EKcM'i'Y 


of  CALlFOKNlA 

AT 

L03  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 


House    Health 


House  Health 


AND   OTHER   PAPERS 


BY 


NORMAN    BRIDGE,  M.D. 

Author  of  "The  Penalties  of  Taste," 
"The  Rewards  of  Taste,"   etc. 


o    » oo      o 

J   I       T      J 


>    >      >  5 

,       '     J     J 


5      3    3,     ■>    , 


NEW  YORK 

DUFFIELD   ^   COMPANY 

MCMVII 


■i  O  =i'*  '"'  ^'>  "> 

-5-   /*/    Vj    v^     i7   v* 


COPYRIGHT,   1907,   BY 
DUFFIELD  &  COMPANY 

Published,  August,  1907 


f      (    (  c       <         ,'«,*' 


THE   TROW   PRESS,    NEW   YORK 


A 


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f.  \ 


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S>3 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

House  Health i 

^-^        Human  Talk 21 

■X        The  Blind  Side  of  the  Average  Parent      .      55 

jj        Some  Commencement  Ideals     .        .        .        -93 

A  Domestic  Clearing  House  ....    121 

The  True  Gospel  of  Sleep      ....    143 

V       Some   Unconceded  Rights  of  Parents  and 

^  Children 163 

The  Trained  Nurse  and  the  Larger  Life   .    187 


House  Health 


House  Health 


Despite  all  effort  to  the  contrary  people 
will  occasionally  fall  sick.  There  are  two  ca- 
lamities that  we  seem  powerless  wholly  to 
prevent ;  namely,  the  occasional  burning  of 
our  houses  and  the  frequent  sicknesses  of  our 
mortal  bodies.  Many  of  us  try  at  great  care 
and  expense  and  with  varying  wisdom  and 
ignorance  to  stand  off  these  evils,  and  with 
differing  success. 

Disease  is  most  prevalent  among  the  poor, 
especially  the  very  poor.  This  is  largely  due 
to  their  unhygienic  lives ;  and  much  of  this 
latter  is  represented  by  their  unsanitary  dwell- 
ings, by  their  extreme  and  often  needless  ex- 
posure to  certain  causes  of  disease,  by  lack  of 
proper  food,  and  by  the  debilitating  personal 
habits  of  some  of  them.  The  personal  habits 
of  the  average  rich,  however,  are  nearly  as 
potent  in  producing  disease. 

3 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

The  influences  that  cause  these  conditions 
are  presumably  not  numerous,  and  they  are 
easily  catalogued.  First  is  bad  ventilation  of 
houses,  especially  in  cold  weather.  Most  of 
even  the  rich,  who  do  not  need  to  be  terrified 
by  their  coal  bills,  live  with  insufficient  ventila- 
tion of  their  dwellings.  More  than  i,ooo  cubic 
feet  of  fresh  air  per  hour  for  each  person 
should  enter  the  house  for  even  fair  ventila- 
tion. Not  one  house  in  a  thousand  in  cold 
weather  fulfills  this  condition,  or  a  quarter 
of  it ;  and  hardly  a  single  house  among  the 
poor,  unless  it  is  unavoidable  by  reason  of 
cracks  and  other  openings  that  cannot  be 
stopped.  The  rule  is  to  batten  up  every  crack 
and  stop  every  opening.  Weather  strips  are 
wrongly  supposed  to  be  a  necessity  in  every 
house  in  cold  climates.  If  not  weather  strips, 
then  rags,  paper,  or  old  clothes  are  used — any- 
thing to  keep  out  every  current  of  fresh  air. 

The  bad  air  causes  disease  in  various  ways, 
chiefly  by  first  producing  debility  and  lessened 
power  of  resistance  to  the  various  microbic  en- 
emies that  are  always  waiting  to  stab  the  body 
at  its  most  vulnerable  point.  Thus  easily  fol- 
low colds,  poor  digestion,  and  all  its  attendant 
ills,  while  several  infectious  diseases  develop 
most  easily.  The  power  for  work  is  also  im- 
paired, and   so  come  lessened  wages  with   a 

4 


J 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

reduction  of  food  and  other  comforts.  The 
contagious  diseases  are  always  more  prevalent 
as  well  as  more  fatal  in  cold  weather,  because 
the  living  poison  that  causes  them  is  concen- 
trated in  unventilated  rooms,  and  the  victims 
take  in  large  doses  thereof.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  the  breathing  of  bad  air  produces,  di- 
rectly and  indirectly,  more  disease,  especially 
among  the  poor,  than  all  other  influences  com- 
bined. 

Perhaps  second  in  importance  is  the  danger 
from  disease  germs  entering  the  body  in  wa- 
ter, milk,  and  other  foods,  most  of  which 
germs  have  been  expelled  from  the  bodies  of 
the  sick.  Of  these  the  tuberculous  and  the  ty- 
phoid germs  are  the  most  important.  Nu- 
merous epidemics  of  typhoid  fever  have  been 
definitely  traced  to  food  and  water,  and  they 
were,  we  now  know,  substantially  all  of  them 
avoidable. 

The  dust  that  rises  from  carpets,  rugs,  and 
hangings  in  houses  is  a  prolific  source  of  dis- 
ease, especially  of  tuberculosis.  Bacilli  of  tu- 
berculosis in  the  sputum  of  the  sick,  and  dis- 
ease germs  of  other  kinds  and  from  other 
sources,  lodge  on  such  objects,  chiefly  the  car- 
pets and  rugs,  and,  as  dust,  are  thrown  into 
the  air  by  every  footfall  or  movement  of  these 
things.      Where  the  ventilation   is  abundant, 

5 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

as  in  the  open  houses  of  summer,  the  danger 
is  least,  but  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  in 
cold  weather  there  is  little  or  no  ventilation, 
and  this  cause  of  disease  has  there  its  most 
sweeping  and  fatal  effects.  Tuberculosis  is 
enormously  prevalent.  Numerous  cases  may 
originate  from  a  single  house  where  a  bad 
case  has  been  harbored.  One  after  another 
the  susceptible  occupants  of  the  house  take  the 
disease,  each  having  inhaled  the  bacilli  left  by 
his  predecessor,  and  each  in  turn  leaving  his 
own  contribution  toward  the  destruction  of 
those  who  come  after  him.  And  all  this  des- 
olation results  from  the  ignorance  or  apathy 
of  the  people,  mostly  the  ignorance  and  the 
apathy. 

Flies  and  mosquitoes  often  bring  disease  to 
people.  Flies  carry  typhoid  germs  on  their  be- 
smeared feet  from  infected  body  excretions  to 
our  food  supply ;  they  also  distribute  tubercu- 
losis in  similar  ways,  while  malaria  and  yellow 
fever  among  the  diseases  are,  in  the  light  of 
our  present-day  knowledge,  solely  distributed 
by  certain  varieties  of  mosquitoes. 

A  fourth  cause  of  disease  is  poor  food,  often 
poorly,  even  foolishly  prepared,  and  too  much 
stimulation.  People  mostly  cook  and  other- 
wise prepare  their  foods  for  the  pleasure  of 
their  taste,  which  in  itself  is  proper,   for  it 

6 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

helps  digestion,  but  they  pay  little  attention 
to  the  need  of  cooking  for  the  digestibility  of 
foods  and  the  getting  of  the  greatest  amount 
of  nourishment  out  of  them  and  into  the  tis- 
sues of  the  body.  So  appetite  is  conserved,  if 
not  worshiped,  while  indigestion  is  brought 
on  and  physical  depreciation  as  a  conse- 
quence. Hence,  much  sickness  comes  and 
lowering  of  the  standard  of  vigor  of  the  race. 
Vast  quantities  of  stimulants  (tea,  coffee,  to- 
bacco, and  alcoholics)  are  taken  for  the  same 
reason — because  the  people  like  the  immediate 
effect  of  pleasure  they  produce,  not  for  any 
lasting  benefit,  for  there  is  none.  Similarly 
they  indulge  in  various  other  physical  excesses 
for  the  immediate  pleasure  of  them,  and  often 
to  their  permanent  harm. 

Great  benefit  in  more  comforts  and  less 
sickness  would  come  to  people  by  better 
housing  and  hygiene.  The  needed  reforms 
are  few  in  number  and  they  are  not  expen- 
sive, but  some  of  them  are  so  radical  in  char- 
acter as  to  appear  to  conservative  minds  revo- 
lutionary. 

The  first  reform  to  be  thought  of  is  not 
better  houses,  but  better  ventilation  of  houses, 
such  as  they  are,  and  especially  of  sleeping 
rooms.  It  matters,  perhaps,  little  which  of 
several  methods  of  ventilation  is  resorted  to, 

7 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

but  a  natural  method  for  the  poor  is  of  cheap 
construction  of  houses  with  the  main  floor 
well  above  the  ground,  and  with  numerous 
cracks  and  crannies  for  the  admission  of  air. 
Plastering  is  not  essential ;  board  walls  will 
do,  even  rather  loose  board  walls.  Weather 
strips  are,  as  usually  employed,  an  enemy  of 
the  race ;  the  poverty  that  sometimes  deprives 
us  of  them  is  life  giving.  No  attempt  should 
be  made  to  keep  the  house  heat  above  60°  or 
65°  F,  People,  young  and  old,  can  endure  this 
easily  when  they  are  accustomed  to  it,  and 
they  should,  as  they  easily  can,  learn  to  enjoy 
it.  Vicious,  indeed,  is  the  habit  of  keeping 
room  temperature  in  cold  weather  at  80° 
or  above.  The  usual  amount  of  fuel  may  well 
be  used  in  winter,  the  lower  temperature  rep- 
resenting better  ventilation.  And  the  better 
air  to  breathe  will  enable  the  inmates  of  a 
house  to  endure  the  lower  temperature  with- 
out discomfort.  The  only  other  provision 
necessary  is,  in  the  case  of  the  weakly  ones, 
more  clothing  of  the  person,  especially  of  the 
feet  and  legs. 

The  sleeping  rooms  should  never  be  closed 
against  the  admission  of  fresh  air.  To  say  the 
night  is  cold  is  never  a  reason  for  shutting 
out  all  ventilation  through  the  windows.  Ar- 
tificial heat  is  not  needed  in  the  sleeping  rooms 

8 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

of  well  people,  but  is  usually  a  harm.  It  is 
perfectly  possible  to  fix  any  well  person  in 
bed  so  that  he  can  sleep  in  comfort  in  a  cold 
room,  even  with  zero  temperature.  If  the  bed- 
clothes are  scanty  a  few  newspapers  laid  be- 
tween the  blankets  will  take  the  place  of  quilts 
and  keep  the  sleeper  warm. 

I  know  it  will  be  said  by  some  critics  that 
such  a  program  as  this  is  cruel  and  imprac- 
ticable, but  the  success  of  the  modern  treat- 
ment of  tuberculosis  by  the  outdoor,  pure  air 
management  has  shown  that  it  is  easy  for  del- 
icate patients  to  endure  such  measures,  not 
merely  with  comfort  but  with  great  pleasure 
as  well  as  benefit.  And  if  a  consumptive  can 
do  it,  certainly  it  ought  to  be  easy  for  other 
invalids  and  for  the  well  people  to  thrive 
upon  it. 

The  bedroom  air  should  be  so  pure  always 
that,  to  the  nostrils  of  a  person  coming  in 
from  out  of  doors,  it  will  never  seem  stuffy ; 
and  over  the  faces  of  the  sleepers  the  air 
should  never  be  still — still  air  means  breath- 
ing many  times  over  the  pollution  of  one's 
own  respiration — in  other  words  one  should 
always  be  in  a  draught,  never  out  of  it ;  there 
is  no  other  safe  rule.  A  draught  of  air  does 
not  produce  colds ;  it  prevents  them.  Colds 
come  of  lowered  vitality,  fatigue,  indigestion, 

9 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

and  disease-producing  germs  that  abound  in 
confined  house  air. 

Consumptives  even  sleep  out  of  doors  and 
in  tents  with  the  flaps  open,  in  zero  weather, 
and  with  the  greatest  satisfaction.  This  lat- 
ter has  been  done  during  several  recent  win- 
ters in  some  colonies  of  tuberculous  patients 
in  northern  States,  and  not  one  of  them  suf- 
fered injury  from  the  experience.  The  only 
artificial  heat  the  tents  had  was  that  of  ker- 
osene stoves  or  small  wood  stoves,  with  fire 
only  while  the  occupants  were  undressing  for 
bed  at  night,  and  while  they  were  dressing  in 
the  morning.  The  patients  in  some  of  these 
resorts  have  had  the  option  of  sleeping  in 
houses  during  the  coldest  weather,  but  elected 
to  stay  in  their  tents. 

In  order  to  conserve  health  to  the  greatest 
degree  possible,  houses  should  be  free  from 
carpets,  rugs,  cloth  hangings,  and  upholstered 
furniture.  Only  so  radical  a  rule  as  this  can 
minimize  to  the  utmost  the  distribution  of  dust 
poisons  to  the  inmates.  If  the  floors  are  cov- 
ered at  all,  it  had  best  be  with  linoleum  or 
some  other  material  with  a  flat  surface,  free 
from  meshes,  and  thus  incapable  of  hiding 
dust.  The  best  covering  of  all  is  good  paint, 
renewed  if  possible  every  year.  Nor  does  such 
absence  of  the  customary  so-called  comforts 

zo 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

in  the  house  need  to  lessen  seriously  the  real 
physical  enjoyment  of  living  within  it ;  its  chief 
disadvantage  is  in  the  violation  of  custom,  the 
outrage  upon  fashion,  the  refuge  from  which 
is  courage  and  independence.  But  there  is 
growing  now  a  fashion  to  do  without  these 
disease-spreading  luxuries,  as  the  cult  of  bet- 
ter ventilation  and  outdoor  life,  and  sleeping 
out  of  doors,  is  increasing  rapidly  among  the 
most  thoughtful.  So  rapidly  is  this  fashion 
spreading  that  it  is  likely,  by  its  benefits  to 
the  physical  lives  of  our  people,  to  increase 
their  average  longevity  to  a  degree  that  will, 
within  two  decades,  actually  show  in  the  cen- 
sus figures. 

One  luxury  the  poor  man  should  have  is 
screens  for  his  windows  and  doors,  in  summer 
time,  against  the  flies  and  mosquitoes.  The 
screens  are  more  than  paid  for  by  the  lessened 
annoyance,  to  say  nothing  of  the  protection 
against  disease,  which  is  a  positive  benefit. 
The  prevention,  in  the  day  time,  of  the  inocu- 
lation of  his  food  with  disease  germs  by  the 
flies  of  summer,  returns  many  fold  the  cost 
of  the  few  inexpensive  screens  of  wire  or 
cotton  netting  that  cover  the  door  and  win- 
dow openings ;  and  fencing  out  the  mosquitoes 
for  the  comfort  of  the  night  increases  the 
sleep   of  the  house   occupants,  to  the   great 

II 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

benefit  of  their  health,  temper,  and  working 
capacity. 

That  these  insect  pests  distribute  among  the 
people  at  least  four  infectious  diseases  has 
been  demonstrated  beyond  question ;  and  there 
is  strong  reason  to  suspect  that  further  investi- 
gation will  show  that  still  other  diseases,  which 
have  long  puzzled  the  pathologists,  are  dis- 
seminated in  this  way. 

The  average  layman  is  almost  wholly  un- 
informed of  the  importance  of  fencing  these 
insects  out  of  his  house.  There  needs  to  be 
a  concerted  missionar\'  movement  of  educa- 
tion in  this  direction,  by  those  who  know,  in 
the  interest  of  those  who  do  not  know.  The 
relatively  trifling  cost  of  this  protection  keeps 
thousands  of  families  from  enjoying  benefits 
that  cannot  be  counted  in  money;  and  nearly 
all  of  them  spend  every  summer,  in  needless 
if  not  foolish  indulgences,  ten  times  as  much 
as  their  mosquito  netting  would  cost.  Pro- 
tection against  flies  and  mosquitoes  ought  to 
be  encouraged  by  law,  and  preached  as  a  doc- 
trine of  sanitary  morals,  and  as  a  part  of  per- 
sonal religion. 

The  protection  of  milk  and  drinking  water 
from  typhoid  and  other  poisons  is  less  a  part 
of  house  sanitation  than  of  general  sanitary 
interest   to  the  community,   but   it   is   of   the 

12 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

greatest  possible  importance.  The  purity  of 
the  water  supply  of  lakes,  rivers,  and  wells, 
and  the  protection  of  milk  cans  from  wash- 
ings with  contaminated  water,  have  made  a 
large  chapter  in  all  recent  discussions  of  per- 
sonal and  public  hygiene.  Their  importance 
can  hardly  be  overestimated,  but  in  general 
the  poor  rarely  have  the  means  of  protecting 
themselves  from  these  dangers,  except  by  boil- 
ing their  water  and  their  milk  before  drinking 
them.  An  immense  gain  would  be  made  if 
all  the  people  could  know  that  these  dangers 
often  exist,  and  that  they  can  be  avoided  by 
so  simple  a  means — only  the  milk  should  not 
be  boiled,  but  heated  to  170°  F.,  for  the  boil- 
ing point  changes  its  taste  and  lessens  its  di- 
gestibility. Lately  it  has  been  discovered  that 
a  little  metallic  copper  immersed  in  drinking 
water  for  a  few  hours  destroys  all  the  typhoid 
germs  it  may  contain,  without  injury  to  the 
potability  of  the  water.  So  here  is  a  possible 
easy  means  of  protection  from  typhoid  poison. 
But  it  has  its  drawbacks,  one  of  which  is  that, 
as  it  is  so  easy  a  remedy,  it  is  likely  to  be  for- 
gotten at  the  very  time  it  is  most  needed.  An- 
other objection  to  it  is  that  dependence  upon 
it  is  likely  to  lead  to  a  relaxation  in  the  gen- 
eral watchfulness  over  the  water  supply  itself. 
Typhoid- fever  germs  are  believed  to  be  oc- 

13 


HOUSE   HEALTH 

casionally  brought  into  the  house  on  lettuce 
leaves,  strawberries,  and  other  vegetables  that 
have  grown  on  or  in  the  ground.  These 
things  are  usually  eaten  uncooked,  and  so  may 
be  dangerous.  Sewer  water  used  to  fertilize 
the  plants  is  almost  the  sole  source  of  these 
germs.  Perfect  protection  against  them  can 
be  secured  by  washing  the  edibles  with  a  five- 
per-cent  solution  of  tartaric  acid — a  harmless 
substance  that  enters  into  our  common  cook- 
ery. The  solution  is  made  by  adding  a  heap- 
ing teaspoonful  of  the  acid  to  a  pint  of  water. 
After  thorough  washing  of  the  foods  in  the 
solution,  or  their  immersion  in  it  for  five  min- 
utes, it  is  easily  rinsed  off  completely  with 
pure  water,  leaving  not  a  particle  of  its  sour 
taste,  nor  changing  the  taste  of  the  foods. 
Even  a  little  of  the  sour  taste  is  not  objection- 
able; tartaric  acid  is  quite  as  harmless  to  the 
system  as  vinegar. 

The  health  of  the  people  would  be  vastly 
improved  by  certain  reforms  in  eating  and 
drinking,  but  such  reforms,  like  all  reforms 
in  our  daily  habits,  are  difficult  of  accomplish- 
ment. 

Much  of  our  food  is  poorly  prepared  by 
cooking  and  otherwise,  whereby  we  get  too 
little  nutriment  out  of  it,  and  with  such  effort 
on  the  part  of  the  digestive  organs  as  to  im- 

14 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

pair  their  powers,  as  well  as  the  powers  of 
life.  Meat  should  be  cooked  with  two  definite 
objects  in  view :  to  kill  parasites  in  its  sub- 
stance (as  of  trichina  and  tapeworm),  and 
to  render  it  easy  to  comminute  by  chewing; 
seasoning  will  always  render  it  palatable.  But 
we  often  overcook  our  meats,  even  burn  them, 
and  render  them  tough  and  indigestible.  The 
most  nutritious  meat  is  often  the  toughest 
and  cheapest,  like  round  steak.  Such  ought 
to  form  a  large  part  of  the  meat  diet  of  the 
poor,  but  it  should  be  minced  artificially.  One 
of  the  most  profitable  implements  in  any  house 
is  a  grinding  machine  for  meat.  It  costs 
little,  and  its  saving  to  the  family,  in  a  house- 
hold where  it  is  used  to  the  best  advantage, 
is  every  year  many  hundred  per  centum  of 
its  cost.  It  obviates  the  need  of  much  chew- 
ing of  meat ;  it  prevents  indigestion,  and  gives 
to  the  body  the  largest  amount  of  the  meat 
pabulum  that  is  possible.  It  is  substantially 
true  that  meat  for  all  children  should  be  finely 
ground  for  them,  for  children  as  a  rule  chew 
their  meat  very  little  more  than  the  carniv- 
orous animals  do;  they  swallow  it  in  chunks 
which  are  poorly  digested,  and  this  is  un- 
profitable as  well  as  unhealthful. 

Many  families  waste  their  soup  bones,  and 
deprive  themselves  thus  of  one  of  the  most 

15 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

nutritious  and  digestible  foods  and  one  that 
is  easily  prepared.  They  fry  ham  and  make 
it  indigestible,  when  it  could  be  made  both 
palatable  and  digestible  by  boiling.  They  fry 
or  boil  their  eggs  hard,  when  they  can  be 
curdled  more  easily  and  made  perfectly  di- 
gestible. They  eat  fresh  bread  and  hot  bis- 
cuits to  the  harm  of  their  stomachs  and  the 
waste  of  their  substance,  when  stale  bread 
has  a  better  taste  and  is  a  perfect  food.  They 
laudably  try  to  get  good  milk  and  then  take 
pains  to  prevent  it  from  souring,  with  the  idea 
that  souring  spoils  it  for  use  as  human  food 
— they  even  feed  it  to  the  pigs  because  it  is 
sour.  But  the  best  people  of  our  own  South 
have  long  since  demonstrated  that  sour  milk, 
otherwise  clabber,  is  one  of  the  best  of  foods, 
as  well  as  one  of  the  most  palatable  of  them 
all.  This  conclusion  has  been  confirmed  by 
modern  medical   science. 

The  betterment  of  the  food  and  a  reduction 
in  the  use  of  stimulants  by  the  people  is  a 
perennial  subject  for  argument  and  exhorta- 
tion. Progress  is  slow,  if,  indeed,  there  is 
progress,  which  there  probably  is;  and  plain 
and  rational  living,  which  means  scientific  liv- 
ing, must  be  advocated  in  season  and  out  of 
season  for  the  better  health  and  greater  hap- 
piness of  the  race.     This  advocacy  is  good 

i6 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

for  the  people  who  make  it,  and  of  some  help 
to  those  for  whom  it  is  made.  But  the  de- 
mand for  these  reforms  is  insignificant  by 
comparison  with  the  need  of  more  fresh  air 
in  the  houses,  especially  the  little  houses  with 
cramped  rooms  and  mean  quarters. 

Other  improvements  that  are  greatly 
needed  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  are :  high- 
er ceilings  and  more  cubic  feet  of  space  for 
each  occupant ;  more  sunlight  through  more 
and  better  windows ;  improvements  in  chim- 
neys, fireplaces,  and  stoves,  so  that  there  will 
be  less  carbonic  oxide  and  other  products  of 
combustion  for  the  inmates  to  breathe ;  fewer 
candles,  lamps,  and  gas  jets  for  light,  and 
more  incandescent  electric  lamps,  to  lessen  the 
contamination  of  the  house  air;  and  finally 
more  cheerful  interiors  and  exteriors  of  dwell- 
ings. These  considerations  are  important ; 
but  they  lose  nine-tenths  of  their  urgency  in 
the  presence  of  good  ventilation,  and  good 
ventilation  is  many  times  more  vital  and  health- 
giving  than  all  of  them  together.  Fresh  air 
is  so  universally  absent  in  every  house  where 
it  can,  by  any  prejudice  or  fear,  be  shut  out, 
that  it  stands  to-day  as  the  one  paramount 
want  in  dwellings  and  places  of  assembly. 
With  it,  the  stoves  will  draw  better,  the  rooms 
will  be  found  large  enough  and  the  ceilings 

17 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

will  be  high  enough,  and  the  homes  will  have 
the  best  ornamentation  of  all :  namely,  better 
health  and  more  vigor,  fewer  colds  and  more 
cheerfulness  on  the  part  of  the  occupants.  It 
will  be  of  less  consequence  whether  the  floor 
is  above  the  earth  or  whether  it  is  the  earth. 

There  is  a  widespread  intense  fear  among 
our  people,  rich  and  poor  alike,  of  some  pos- 
sible baneful  effect  of  fresh  air,  of  good  ven- 
tilation and  draughts,  and  especially  of  the 
cleanest  and  purest  air  of  all;  namely,  the 
night  air.  With  many  of  them  this  fear  is 
more  absorbing  and  abiding  than  their  dread 
of  sin  and  death,  or  of  the  great  hereafter. 
This  fear  has  been  handed  down  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  like  a  truth  that  is  sacred 
— ^but  it  is  not  a  truth  and  it  is  not  sacred ;  it 
is  a  very  vile  and  death-breeding  prejudice 
that  can  be  swept  away  only  by  constant  argu- 
ments, example,  and  insistence. 

Of  the  other  needs  I  have  named,  sunlight 
is  the  only  one  that  ventilation  cannot  wholly 
substitute.  Sunlight  is  health-giving  and 
ought  to  enter  every  dwelling,  but  its  chief 
value  is  in  its  power  to  destroy  pathogenic 
microbes,  and  if  the  microbes  are  absent  by 
exclusion  of  insects,  the  suppression  of  dust, 
the  absence  of  sickness,  and  by  good  ventila- 
tion, then  the  sunlight  is  not  vital,  save  for 

i8 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

its  effect  on  those  who  rarely  or  never  go  out 
of  doors ;  and  even  to  them  it  is  incomparably 
less  important  than  fresh  air.  Where  there 
are  coughing  tuberculous  patients,  of  course 
sunlight  is  in  the  highest  degree  desirable, 
for  it  has  power  to  destroy  the  germs  of  the 
disease ;  and  this  is  one  of  its  greatest  values 
in  inclosures  of  all  sorts ;  that  is,  to  guard 
against  tuberculosis  in  the  house.  But  the  av- 
erage room  in  good  houses  can  have  sunshine 
only  a  short  time  any  day  ;  hardly  long  enough 
to  kill  accumulating  tubercle  bacilli ;  the  great- 
est benefits  of  daylight  and  sunlight  are  and 
must  always  be  experienced  out  of  doors. 

Thus  the  gospel  of  the  best  health  and  the 
least  sickness  is  outdoor  air  and  the  daylight 
and  sunlight  of  out  of  doors.  In  proportion 
as  our  houses  bring  these  blessings  within 
them  are  we  well  and  wholesomely  housed ; 
in  so  far  as  they  are  shut  out  are  we  poorly 
housed.  Our  theory  is  wrong  which  holds 
that  man  is  fortunate  in  proportion  as  he  is 
able  to  cover  himself  with  a  tightly  built  house. 
The  truth  is  that  almost  in  proportion  as  he 
gets  back  to  nature  in  the  open,  or,  if  you 
please,  back  somewhat  toward  barbarism,  does 
he  have  the  best  health  and  the  longest  life. 

When  a  rich  man  leaves  his  mansion  and 
builds  himself  a  shack  in  the  wilderness  that 

19 


HOUSE    HEALTH 

he  may  have  for  a  brief  period  the  greatest 
of  earth's  benefits,  it  is  called  luxury ;  but 
when  a  poor  man  must  live  in  a  shack  because 
he  can  have  no  other  or  supposedly  better 
house,  it  is  called  hardship  ;  and  we  are  flooded 
with  pathetic  laments  against  the  fate  that 
compels  innocent  people,  even  children,  to  live 
in  houses  through  whose  cracks  the  winds  of 
winter  whistle  and  sprinkle  snow  on  the  beds 
of  the  sleepers. 

As  long  as  such  heresies  last  the  reforming 
philanthropist  has  work  ahead  of  him.  He 
may  well  devote  his  energy  to  a  campaign  of 
education  against  this  sort  of  foolishness. 
And  he  may  remember  for  his  soul's  comfort 
that  few  greater  services  are  ever  done  for 
any  man  than  to  show  him  that  some  of  the 
things  which  he  regards  as  his  misfortunes  are 
really  his  blessings. 


20 


Human  Talk 


Human  Talk 


Man  is  the  animal  that  talks,  and  a  large 
part  of  such  education  as  he  has  is  devoted 
to  the  cultivation  of  his  speech  and  the  uses 
of  it.  Sometimes  the  whole  of  his  education 
is  of  this  sort.  The  literature  of  the  talk  of 
man  is  varied  and  enormous,  and  is  the  ac- 
cumulation of  ages.  It  would  seem  as  if  every 
side  of  the  subject  must  have  been  studied 
and  threshed  over  to  the  last  analysis.  But 
this  is  not  the  case  and  cannot  be.  Evolution 
of  the  language  goes  on  with  that  of  the  race ; 
and  evolution  will  not  stop  even  though  we  try 
to  make  it.  There  always  is,  therefore,  and 
probably  always  will  be,  a  new  word  to  be 
uttered   upon  this  absorbing  subject. 

Much  attention  has  been  given  to  the  art 
of  conversation  and  to  the  graces  of  elegant 
speech,  as  well  as  to  the  value  of  a  large  vo- 
cabulary.    Races,  peoples,  and  individuals  us- 

23 


HUMAN   TALK 

ing  the  largest  number  of  words  and  the  most 
varied  forms  of  speech  have  had,  other  things 
being  equal,  most  power  in  the  world.  This 
is  rational,  for  words  are  among  our  working 
tools,  and  those  who  have  most  words,  other- 
wise the  largest  capacity  for  communication 
of  ideas,  are  likely  to  be  best  equipped  in  the 
struggles  of  life.  Great  power  to  phrase  ideas 
helps  to  the  creation  of  them,  and  leads  to 
thought,  and  so  gives  the  inside  track  in  the 
world  race.  But  this  fact  is  only  incidental 
to  the  art  called  conversation,  and  for  this 
latter  a  large  vocabulary  is  not  necessary; 
with  the  bare  knowledge  of  a  hundred  words 
some  people  can  converse  beautifully;  nor 
does  the  size  of  the  vocabulary  account  for  the 
revelations  that  a  man  unconsciously  makes 
about  himself  when  he  talks.  And  many  of 
these  revelations  are  worth  studying,  for  they 
are  marvelous. 

There  is,  among  people  in  general,  a  vast 
amount  of  ignorance  about  their  speech  in 
many  of  its  phases.  For  example,  we  know 
very  little  about  the  physical  production  of 
speech ;  most  of  us  are  ignorant  of  the  way 
sounds  are  produced  and  syllables  made  by 
the  human  voice,  how  the  different  organs  of 
speech,  the  lips,  teeth,  tongue,  palate,  and  vo- 
cal cords  operate,  and  how  their  actions  are 

24 


HUMAN   TALK 

coordinated.  Few  among  even  thoughtful 
people  ever  think  of  this  side  of  the  subject, 
not  to  say  study  it.  In  childhood  we  learn 
to  talk  mimetically,  we  never  know  how  or 
why;  and  on  reaching  years  of  maturity  we 
mostly  continue  in  the  same  ignorance. 
Asked  oflfhand  to  state  the  difference  in  the 
vocal  creation — the  mechanism  of  production 
— of  the  sounds  of  the  letters  m  and  n,  or  of  p, 
d,  or  b,  or  of  the  syllables  ko  and  go,  and  not 
one  educated  man  in  twenty,  if  indeed  one 
in  a  hundred,  could  tell  readily  and  correctly. 
The  coordination  of  many  phonetic  sounds 
into  some  thousands  of  combinations  required 
for  correct  speech  in  any  language  constitutes 
a  maze  of  physical  and  nervous  mechanism 
that  is  altogether  beyond  the  grasp  of  most  of 
us.  Few  students  ever  attempt  to  grasp  it; 
and  to  some  of  them  the  fact  that  the  vocal 
tones  are  all  made  by  the  vibration  of  two  thin 
strings  in  the  larynx  comes  as  a  piece  of  sur- 
prising information. 

Nothing  better  illustrates  our  abounding 
ignorance  of  this  side  of  the  subject  than  our 
toleration  of  certain  impediments  of  speech. 
Perhaps  the  commonest  one,  and  surely  the 
most  discreditable  one,  is  lisping.  This  dis- 
figures the  talk  of  many  people  through  life, 
and  is  usually,  and  mistakenly,  thought  to  be 

25 


HUMAN    TALK 

due  to  some  defect  in  the  vocal  organs.  Ask 
a  hundred  educated  men  and  women  as  you 
meet  them,  how  to  correct  Hsping,  and  not 
two  will  tell  you — while  most  of  them  will 
declare  that  it  cannot  be  done.  Some  phy- 
sicians and  voice  teachers  there  are  who  do 
not  know  any  better ;  a  few  of  these  are  them- 
selves lifelong  lispers.  But  the  worst  lisper 
can  learn  in  a  few  minutes  to  speak  correctly 
if  he  will  observe  even  casually  how  he  makes 
his  own  sibilant  sounds  with  the  tongue  and 
upper  teeth,  and  how  normal  speakers  use  the 
two  sets  of  front  teeth  without  the  tongue. 
Lisping  is  a  hissing  outrage  upon  the  lan- 
guage, a  despicably  unnecessary  blemish  of 
speech;  and  most  of  the  other  so-called  im- 
pediments are  just  as  needless  to  normal 
mouths,  if  not  quite  so  easily  correctible. 

Ignorant  as  we  are  of  the  way  we  vocally 
form  our  words,  we  as  poorly  comprehend  the 
methods  and  motives  underlying  the  subject- 
matter  of  much  of  the  talk  of  mankind.  This 
latter  is  the  psychologic  side  and  is  gen- 
erally supposed  to  be  simple  and  easily  under- 
stood, but  it  is  complicated  beyond  expression. 
Talk  is  said  to  reveal  the  man ;  it  does,  but 
often  as  much  by  what  it  omits  as  by  what 
it  utters,  and  even  by  the  very  contraries  of 
the  latter. 

26 


HUMAN   TALK 

Many  of  the  mental  aspects  of  man  as  a 
talking  animal  have  been  dealt  with  in  fiction 
— indeed,  large  novels  by  some  of  the  masters 
have  been  almost  wholly  devoted  to  the  talk 
of  the  people  of  their  plots,  with  plentiful  dis- 
cussion of  the  psychologic  phases,  and  these 
have  helped  us  to  a  somewhat  better  under- 
standing of  the  motives  that  influence  many 
of  us  in  the  commoner  walks  of  life.  But 
the  novelists  have  created  little ;  they  have 
transcribed  much,  and  varied  a  little  what  they 
have  heard  people  say.  As  men  are  incapable 
of  creations  of  fancy  that  are  not  somehow 
constructed  out  of  the  materials  of  experience, 
the  fiction  writers  must  mostly  fill  their  stories 
with  people  and  situations  and  plots  out  of 
the  experiences  of  life,  rearranged,  of  course, 
by  the  skill  of  the  writer,  as  children  re- 
arrange their  blocks  or  picture  cards  to 
make  new  structures  and  effects.  Often  the 
result  is  grotesque  as  well  as  fanciful,  as  it 
is  meant  to  be  to  stir  or  shock  the  popular 
fancy,  or  as  it  must  be  when  it  is  the  product 
of  an  abnormal  brain ;  and  many  of  the  fiction 
writers  have  abnormal  minds.  Sometimes  the 
writers  seem  moved  by  a  larger  purpose,  to 
give  the  deeper  springs  of  speech  and  action 
— really  to  educate — but  usually,  as  most  nov- 
eUsts  themselves  confess,  they  write  to  amuse 

27 


HUMAN   TALK 

their  readers  and  to  sell  their  books.  These 
writings,  moreover,  are  nearly  all  woven  about 
the  paramount  sentiment  between  the  sexes, 
and  so,  while  for  this  reason  they  are  usually 
interesting  and  frequently  fascinating,  they 
have  a  narrow  range  when  the  whole  of  hu- 
man life  is  considered. 

Much  of  the  most  revealing  talk  of  people 
could  never  be  written  in  a  story — some  of  it 
would  be  thought  improper  and  might  exclude 
the  books  from  the  mails,  or,  for  the  most 
needy  of  its  readers  it  would  be  uninteresting. 
Although  the  novelist  is  frequently  gifted  to  a 
high  degree  with  insight,  he  often  fails  to 
catch  all  the  meaning  of  the  talk  he  hears,  all 
its  impelling  motives ;  and  I  am  sure  thousands 
of  people  never  themselves  know  or  would  be 
able  to  define  the  deeper  promptings  of  much 
of  their  own  talk.  Few  people  have  a  power 
of  introspection  that  is  sufficiently  searching 
to  do  this ;  as  few  are  calm  enough,  and  hon- 
est enough  with  themselves,  to  do  it.  When 
one  attempts  to  interpret  the  ultimate  motives 
of  his  own  talk  he  is  apt  to  be  swayed  by  one 
of  two  emotions :  either  his  egoism,  which 
gives  a  wrong  tilt  to  his  judgment ;  or  his  self- 
abasement,  due  to  essential  modesty  or  a  sense 
of  his  shortcomings  or  his  sins.  It  is  a  doc- 
trine both  venerable  and  true,  that  nobody  can 

28 


HUMAN   TALK 

if  he  would  tell  the  complete  story  of  his  life, 
and  that  nobody  would  do  it  if  he  could. 

Very  much  of  the  interesting  conversation 
among  people  fails  to  reveal  either  to  the  cas- 
ual observer  or  to  the  thoughtful  student  the 
whole  picture  of  the  motives  that  lie  back  of 
it.  In  the  twilight  yonder,  for  example,  there 
is  the  hum  of  low-pitched,  intense  conversa- 
tion between  a  young  man  and  a  young  wom- 
an. They  are  trying,  or  appear  to  be  trying, 
to  have  a  heart-to-heart  talk,  which  means  a 
completely  frank  talk  with  each  other;  but 
they  seem  to  find  obstacles,  the  sledding  is 
hard,  the  runners  grate  upon  the  gravel.  They 
are  wholly  un frank,  and  they  talk  in  riddles, 
hints,  and  inferences,  and  with  gentle  shafts 
of  satire,  irony,  and  appealings.  What  is  all 
this  fencing  about?  The  common  verdict 
would  be  that  two  youngsters  are  trying  to 
make  love  to  each  other,  and  really  are  afraid 
to  do  it,  but  such  a  verdict  would  be  wrong. 
Possibly,  even  probably,  the  man  is  too  bashful 
to  come  to  the  point  readily  and  say  just  what 
he  would  like  to  say.  Most  likely  he  is  cov- 
ertly trying  to  learn  how  the  woman  would 
treat  a  serious  proposal  if  he  should  make  one 
to  her ;  the  deep  motive — undefined  and  dimly 
perceived — is  to  avoid  the  possible  humiliation 
of  a  refusal.    At  the  same  time  he  appears  not 

29 


HUMAN   TALK 

to  know  that  she  is  trying  to  shun  a  cognate 
calamity.  He  thinks  she  is  uncandid  or  cruel, 
and  she  judges  him  similarly.  Both  judg- 
ments are  wrong  as  to  the  cruelty,  for  each 
is  embarrassed  by  difficulties  that  are  uncon- 
sidered by  the  other.  To  be  absolutely  un- 
reserved she  would  have  to  say  to  him :  "  I 
suspect  that  you  would  like  to  know  how  I 
would  answer  if  you  were  to  propose  marriage 
to  me.  This  in  justice  to  myself  I  cannot  tell 
you,  and  if  I  were  to  do  so  my  attraction  for 
you  would  cease."  For  her  to  be  thus  candid 
would  stamp  her  as  simple-minded.  So  she 
must  angle  to  bring  him  to  the  point  of  mak- 
ing a  proposal — if  he  is  so  inclined — without 
having  consciously  given  him  beforehand  any 
very  plain  hint  of  how  she  would  treat  it.  She 
would  not  for  a  small  world  give  him,  or  her 
jealous  friends  and  enemies,  the  chance  to  say 
that  she  had  given  her  answer  to  a  momentous 
question  that  had  never  been  asked — and  he 
dreads  above  all  things  to  be  refused  by  a 
woman.  His  cowardice  is  far  less  commend- 
able than  hers,  for  his  sentimental  fate  is  less 
dependent  upon  the  issue. 

Such  are  some  of  the  emotions  that  are 
quite  as  moving  in  the  confab  as  the  tenderer 
sentiments,  and  almost  as  unavoidable,  and 
they  are  at  bottom  a  sort  of  conceit,  an  egoism, 

30 


HUMAN   TALK 

a  selfishness  that  shrinks  in  an  imcourageous 
way  from  the  chance  of  a  humiliation.  It  is 
an  emotion  that  is  apt  to  make  one  uncandid 
and  unfrank,  and  appear  to  be  less  noble,  with- 
out really  being  so.  But  this  guidepost  of  the 
conversation  rarely  or  never  comes  out  in  a 
story,  although  the  story  may  be  enchanting, 
and  may  give  much  of  the  iridescence  of  the 
talk  correctly. 

The  thing  that  appears  to  the  unintentional 
observer  of  the  case  referred  to,  is  two  young 
people  who  are  making  love  in  what  seems  to 
be  a  very  bungling  way,  and  whom  their 
friends  would  like  to  help  along,  or  stop,  or 
smother.  Not  only  do  we  usually  fail  to  see 
the  egoistic  quality  of  the  talk  in  this  kind  of 
a  conference,  but  the  two  parties  themselves 
are  equally  oblivious  to  the  fact  that  it  has 
such  a  quality.  People  in  general  do  not  know 
when  they  themselves  talk  or  act  conceitedly. 
They  dislike  to  reveal  an  excess  of  egotism, 
or  any  egotism  at  all,  and  usually  do  not  know 
that  they  show  it,  or  even  that  they  have  it. 
But  when  this  weakness  possesses  them  it  in- 
variably crops  out  in  their  talk  sooner  or  later, 
and  if  they  discover  it  they  try  to  reform,  al- 
though the  effort  may  be  weak  and  halting. 

So  in  a  thousand  ways,  by  their  conversa- 
tion, people  disclose  motives  that  they  are  not 

31 


HUMAN    TALK 

even  aware  of  having;  sometimes  the  fact  is 
perfectly  obvious,  sometimes  very  obscure.  At 
times  they  show  plainly  certain  motives  they 
know  of  and  think  they  hide,  at  other  times 
they  do  nearly  hide  them.  If  we  study  people 
thus  as  from  a  height,  impersonally,  and  try 
to  see  how  their  talk  is  related  to  their  inner 
selves  we  shall  make  some  surprising  discov- 
eries. 

People  by  their  accents,  modes  of  expres- 
sion, pronunciations,  and  idioms,  reveal  their 
degree  of  education,  their  associations,  their 
habits,  and  the  land  of  their  birth.  And  they 
are  rarely  able  to  hide  these  things  from  good 
observers.  A  Scotch  friend  of  mine  had  lived 
in  America  for  thirty  years  and  had  never 
been  able  to  get  rid  of  all  of  his  brogue.  He 
divulged  his  origin  in  nearly  every  sentence 
he  uttered.  Lately  he  made  a  visit  to  his  old 
home  and  tried  by  all  his  arts,  by  broadening 
his  brogue  and  the  local  character  of  his 
clothes,  to  pass  himself  off  as  a  Scotchman, 
but  he  failed  utterly.  He  was  everywhere 
branded  as  an  American.  The  idioms  and  ac- 
cents he  had  not  been  quite  able  to  get  rid  of 
had  stamped  him  here  as  a  foreigner,  while 
the  talk  methods  he  had  acquired  here,  and 
thought  he  knew  of  and  could  hide  while 
there,  betrayed  him  unerringly. 

32 


HUMAN    TALK 

If  we  could  hear  all  the  talk  of  any  set  of 
people,  a  discriminating  study  might  discover 
a  large  part  of  the  personality  of  a  given  mem- 
ber of  it.  He  might  reveal  nine  tenths  of  him- 
self, directly  or  indirectly.  The  final  tenth  he 
probably  could  not  reveal  if  he  would,  and  he 
most  certainly  would  not  if  he  could.  But  we 
should  need  to  hear  every  word  in  order  to 
learn  the  nine  tenths.  And  of  very  few  peo- 
ple would  it  be  possible  to  do  this,  while  as  to 
these  few  we  should  probably  be  so  biased  as 
to  spoil  the  best  judgment. 

The  obvious  motives  or  emotions  that  most 
enter  into  the  talk  of  mankind  are  three  or 
four  in  number ;  there  are  a  myriad  of  minor 
ones,  like  the  wavelets  of  the  sea,  but  these 
few  stand  out  as  the  most  cardinal  of  all.  One 
is  a  desire  to  please — that  is,  to  make  a  good 
impression;  another  is  self -entertainment. 
Another  is  to  accomplish  the  business  or  mis- 
sion in  hand  without  special  regard  to  the 
impression  made  upon  others,  that  is,  to  get 
information  and  to  do  things.  A  third  is  a 
certain,  usually  unconscious,  sentiment  of 
protest,  an  irritability  that  prompts  some  ob- 
jection to  every  proposition.  In  this  all  shades 
are  shown  from  gentle  disapproval  to  snarling 
opposition.  The  mental  and  moral  porcupine 
quills  are  turned  forward,  and  every  approach- 

33 


HUMAN    TALK 

ing  object  plunges  against  them  with  more  or 
less  force  and  surprise. 

The  same  individual  will  often  show  each 
of  three  or  four  emotions  to  be  uppermost  at 
different  times  within  an  hour,  sometimes 
within  the  space  of  a  minute.  These  few  emo- 
tions, with  other  and  minor  ones,  are  com- 
mingled in  such  variations  at  different  times 
in  the  lives  of  people  as  to  make  the  picture 
of  a  moral  kaleidoscope ;  no  two  are  ever 
quite  alike.  These  pictures  reveal  themselves 
in  the  talk  as  well  as  the  actions  of  people,  and, 
I  believe,  always  best  and  most  accurately  to 
the  thoughtful  outside  observer,  rarely  as  well 
to  the  men  and  women  in  the  picture. 

The  emotion  of  a  desire  to  please  and  the 
emotion  of  protest  run  in  opposing  directions. 
Both  are  more  or  less  selfish,  but  this  end  is 
attained  in  different  ways:  by  the  former  we 
gratify  ourselves  through  our  consideration 
for  others,  and  it  is  always  acceptable  to 
others ;  by  the  latter  we  draw  ourselves  into 
our  selfish  shells,  and  please  ourselves  while 
we  antagonize  others. 

The  logical  purposes  of  speech  are  useful- 
ness and  pleasure.  It  is  to  enable  us  to  ex- 
press our  feelings,  desires,  and  intentions  ac- 
curately ;  yet  it  so  often,  even  among  the  most 
refined,  fails  of  this  and  tells  something  dif- 

34 


HUMAN   TALK 

ferent  that  one  is  sometimes  tempted  to  doubt 
its  usefulness.  Take  a  sensitive,  refined  wom- 
an with  strong  imagination  and,  if  her  ego- 
ism is  also  strong,  it  will  be  impossible  to  talk 
to  her  and  be  understood  at  just  what  you 
say.  Ask  her  the  simplest  question  and  she 
will  immediately  guess  that  there  is  some  pur- 
pose back  of  it  that  does  not  appear  in  the 
terms  in  which  it  is  expressed,  and  she  will 
direct  her  answer  to  that  something,  not  to 
the  question.  Ask  her  how  many  hours  she 
sleeps  in  the  twenty-four,  and  she  will  say 
she  goes  to  bed  at  nine  o'clock.  Ask  her  what 
time  she  gets  up  in  the  morning  and  she  will 
not  answer  you  directly,  but,  if  she  is  young, 
she  may  tell  you  that  she  does  have  her  les- 
sons ready  in  time ;  if  she  is  a  matron,  she 
may  declare  that  she  does  not  neglect  her 
morning  duties  to  her  children.  Not  seldom 
do  these  undirected,  automatic  mental  changes 
hit  the  mark  and  divine  the  meaning  that  may 
be  back  of  the  questions,  but  most  often  they 
are  far  wide  of  the  mark — ridiculously  far 
from  it ;  and,  right  or  wrong,  they  are  made 
with  the  speed  of  lightning. 

I  once  listened  with  great  interest  to  a 
woman's  account  of  the  way  she  managed  her 
children,  asking,  in  the  course  of  the  conver- 
sation, a  few  commonplace  questions  about  it, 

35 


HUMAN   TALK 

and  I  was  on  the  point  of  paying  a  high 
compliment  to  her  good  sense  in  the  matter, 
when  she  broke  out  with :  "  Oh,  I  know  you 
think  I  am  densely  ignorant  and  don't  know 
how  to  bring  up  my  children,  and  perhaps  I 
don't !  "  What  was  the  matter  with  the  wom- 
an? She  merely  yearned  for  approval  and 
required  it  in  every  word  and  even  look  of 
her  listener ;  without  this  she  was  sad  and 
thought  herself  disapproved  of.  A  meditative 
look  from  her  listener  would  not  do ;  she  must 
have  constant  manifest  approval. 

Among  such  people  conversation  is  often 
not  so  much  a  means  of  giving  out  one's 
thoughts  frankly,  as  of  each  trying  to  divine 
what  the  other  thinks  and  does  not  say ;  and 
each  hiding  somewhat  of  his  own  thoughts — 
a  sort  of  psychologic  game  or  gamble.  And 
six  times  out  of  ten  their  judgments  of  each 
other  are  faulty  as  to  the  meanings  that  are 
hidden.  People  in  gambling  for  money  are 
said  to  try  to  cover  their  own  emotions  and 
divine  those  of  their  opponents  —  that  is  a 
psychologic  game  too.  And  in  that  game,  as 
in  the  games  of  talk  among  sensitive  souls,  the 
mistakes  in  divination  are  at  least  as  numer- 
ous as  the  successes.  Invite  a  refined  and  po- 
lite friend  to  go  to  lunch  with  you,  and  ask 
what  you  shall  order  for  him  to  eat.     Will 

36 


HUMAN   TALK 

he  tell  you  truthfully?  Once  in  ten  times  per- 
haps, the  other  nine  times  he  will  name  the 
thing  he  divines  that  you  like,  or  he  will  have 
scruples  as  to  the  cost  of  his  choice.  He  may 
retort  with  a  question  as  to  what  you  like,  and 
if  you  say  tripe  he  is  almost  sure  to  think  you 
have  named  that  delicacy  because  you  think 
he  prefers  it.  So  he  says  beefsteak,  which  he 
guesses  you  really  prefer.  But  he  is  himself 
fond  of  tripe,  and  so  are  you ;  and  in  this  blun- 
dering of  politeness  neither  of  you  gets  his 
first  choice ;  both  are  defrauded. 

A  man  will,  almost  in  the  lapse  of  a  minute, 
order  his  employees  in  a  matter-of-fact  sort  of 
way  as  to  some  piece  of  work,  will  scold  his 
wife  or  child  for  some  act  or  word  that  hap- 
pens to  run  counter  to  his  raw  sensibilities,  and 
will  then  turn  to  some  approaching  neighbor 
or  stranger  and  address  him  in  the  most  polite 
and  genial  terms — making  the  best  possible 
impression.  Could  you  truly  judge  of  that 
man  by  hearing  a  single  one  of  these  speeches 
without  the  others — and  others  still?  Each 
shows  him  as  quite  a  different  being  from 
either  of  the  others.  If  he  ever  falls  into  an 
unselfish  mood  of  introspection  in  a  quiet  mo- 
ment, the  man  himself  knows  he  is  a  different 
being  at  each  of  these  respective  moments. 
When  he  stops  to  think — as  he  rarely  does — 

37 


HUMAN   TALK 

just  what  his  moral  impulses  are  in  each  of 
his  moods,  he  knows.  If  you  were  to  ask  him 
why  he  was  so  polite  to  his  neighbor,  he  could 
perhaps  give  you  the  correct  answer,  but  it  is 
doubtful  that  he  would.  And  he  might  in  his 
own  soul,  when  mellowed  by  remorse,  cor- 
rectly call  himself  a  snappish  brute  for  scold- 
ing his  wife. 

But  the  girl  who  comes  to  call  on  you  and 
talks  for  a  full  hour  in  a  steady  gale  about  her 
"  things,"  and  her  notions,  and  what  she  and 
her  mother  and  father  said,  and  what  the  other 
girls  said,  and  a  hundred  other  things,  and  all 
without  giving  you  a  chance  to  wedge  in  a 
word — she  could  not  tell  why  she  does  it,  even 
if  she  prayed  in  sackcloth  for  the  wisdom  to 
do  so.  Should  she  be  told  that  she  had  done 
all  the  talking  she  would  be  surprised ;  and 
should  you  tell  her  that  the  reason  she  did  it 
was  a  mixture  of  bashfulness  and  conceit,  with 
a  disposition  to  be  polite,  she  would  be  even 
more  surprised.  Yet  you  would  be  telling  her 
a  very  exact  piece  of  truth. 

The  girl  who  talks  in  an  interminable  mono- 
logue does  not  always  do  it  because  she  wishes 
to,  but  because,  if  she  stops,  she  blushes  with 
dififidence  and  is  covered  with  chagrin.  The 
talk  is  a  trick  to  cover  her  bashfulness.  Like 
many  a   young   man  making   a    speech,    she 

38 


HUMAN    TALK 

has  difficulty  to  find  a  good  place  to  stop. 
There  is  a  vast  difference  between  that  girl 
and  the  one  who  just  enjoys  talking,  and  runs 
on,  pleased  with  her  own  chatter.  Her  motive 
power  is  the  purest  egoism  to  be  found  in  the 
list  of  human  emotions.  She  will  not  get  nerv- 
ous prostration  from  entertaining  her  guests. 
She  will  do  nine  tenths  of  the  talking,  and 
afterwards  comment  on  the  remarkable  en- 
tertaining power  of  the  guests.  Visitors  to 
her  are  a  real  boon,  for  they  enable  her  to 
work  off  some  of  her  pent-up  potentiality  of 
talk ;  and  this  exercise  is  a  constant  joy.  The 
woman  who  breaks  down  under  such  a  strain 
is  she  to  whom  it  is  a  duty,  and  a  hard  one, 
to  entertain,  or  to  keep  up  conversation.  She 
racks  her  brain  to  think  of  things  to  say — the 
other  one  has  so  much  to  say  that  she  has  to 
restrain  herself  constantly.  And  when  she 
does  stop,  it  is  with  vast  reservoirs  of  talk 
force  still  waiting  to  be  tapped. 

The  mental  sense  of  a  necessity  to  talk  is  an 
awful  burden  to  some  men  and  women.  The 
presence  of  people  whom  it  seems  necessary  to 
entertain  becomes  distracting.  One  feels  that 
he  must  for  their  benefit  keep  up  a  running 
polite  conversation,  and  the  incubus  of  that 
feeling  to  a  sensitive  person  is  unutterable.  If 
some   other   person   will    lead,  or   will  carry 

39 


HUMAN   TALK 

along  the  conversation,  it  is  all  right,  as 
when  you  are  the  guest  and  the  other  the 
host.  But  you  become  the  host  and  he  the 
guest,  and  see  the  load  grow  heavy.  Many  a 
woman  of  society  has  gone  down  to  helpless 
invalidism,  to  insanity,  and  to  death  under  it. 
It  is  so  awful  to  many  nervous  patients  that 
they  are  forbidden  to  receive  calls  from  others, 
especially  from  those  toward  whom  they  feel 
the  necessity  of  being  agreeable.  One  call  will 
make  such  an  one  sick  for  a  week. 

Few  things  can  be  more  terrible  than  to  be 
shut  up  with  one  whom  you  must  entertain, 
or  feel  that  you  must,  by  conversation  that 
shall  not  flag.  For  a  calm,  tranquil  nature  it 
is  worse  than  solitary  confinement ;  and  for 
some  of  the  nervous  and  sensitive  ones  it  is 
moral  and  mental  annihilation. 

In  my  presence  once  a  girl  was  trying  to 
satisfy  her  parents  that  she  was  justified  in  re- 
fusing to  marry  the  man  whom  they  had 
chosen  for  her.  I  did  not  think  her  arguments 
were  very  good,  until  she  said  that  whenever 
he  called  upon  her  she  grew  tired  trying  to 
find  talk  to  entertain  him.  Then  I  knew  she 
had  more  than  a  reason — although  it  did  not 
satisfy  her  father  and  mother.  She  had  never 
learned  the  golden  power  of  silence,  and  she 
was  much  in  need  of  that  lesson.     Silence  is 

40 


HUMAN   TALK 

often  the  best  conversation ;  and  it  is  the 
greatest  test  and  sign  of  the  adaptation  of 
friends  to  each  other.  Friends  are  never  in 
the  depths  of  each  other's  intimacy  till  they  can 
be  silent  together  and  find  that  restful.  Till 
then  they  are  never  divinely  acquainted. 

Another  person  whose  talk  is  often  unfor- 
tunate is  he  who  is  prone  to  fear  that  he  has 
said  the  wrong  thing.  He  is  likely  to  be  a 
very  literalist  in  his  absurd  casuistry.  He  will 
upbraid  himself  for  something  he  has  said  or 
thinks  he  has,  then  go  back  and  apologize  for 
it,  often  to  the  surprise  of  the  one  he  has 
talked  to,  who  has  seen  nothing  wrong  in  what 
he  said,  or  possibly  has  seen  a  wholly  dif- 
ferent wrong  from  the  one  the  sensitive  soul 
has  worried  about.  The  fellow  who  really 
speaks  recklessly  or  improperly  is  usually  the 
one  who  never  discovers  it,  and  even  denies  it ; 
and  he  is  the  last  to  apologize  for  it. 

The  moods  of  conversation  are  a  perfect 
aurora  borealis  of  changes  and  curiosities. 
People  seem  at  times  to  be  dominated  by  a 
particular  spirit  or  emotion  that  tinges  every- 
thing they  say.  At  times  a  whole  company 
will  seem  to  be  in  the  grasp  of  this  sort  of  an 
influence.  It  may  be  one  of  complaint,  or  of 
anger,  of  severity  or  hilarity,  of  religiousness, 
or  of  mirth. 

41 


HUMAN    TALK 

One  of  the  most  interesting  is  the  joking 
mood ;  you  may  often  see  a  company  of  people 
swayed  for  an  hour  by  this  spirit.  Everyone 
seems  bound  to  contribute  to  the  roystering. 
A  serious  word  or  suggestion  is  frowned 
upon  ;  nothing  but  jokes,  gags,  jibes,  and  take- 
offs  are  tolerated.  Not  even  refined  humor 
or  wit  will  do ;  it  must  be  loud  or  coarse ; 
finally  it  becomes  a  sort  of  spiritual  debauch, 
from  which  later  there  is  a  recoil  in  the  semi- 
disgust  of  satiety,  such  as  follows  alcoholic 
intoxication  or  an  outburst  of  mob  violence. 

This  spirit  sometimes  takes  the  form  of 
practical  jokes,  even  indignities,  as  in  the  haz- 
ing and  initiations  of  students,  and  the  chari- 
vari and  kindred  humiliations  visited  upon 
wedding  couples.  These  things  are  often  done 
by  real  if  rather  coarse-grained  friends  of  the 
victims ;  they  are  unable  to  resist  the  force 
of  the  class  conscience  in  the  matter;  one 
starts  the  ball  of  fun  and  hilarity,  and  the 
others  must  help  it  along.  Each  is  moved  to 
try  to  outdo  all  the  others  in  devising  the  most 
striking  and  extreme  infliction.  So  it  is  with 
talk  of  this  sort — one  tells  a  joke,  another 
tries  to  match  it,  and  feels  annoyed  or  dis- 
appointed if  he  fails,  and  especially  if  he  fails 
to  evoke  a  roar  of  laughter.  Conversation 
is  stilted,  the  company  speaks  in  riddles  and 

42 


HUMAN    TALK 

hyperbole.  After  the  thing  is  over  the  par- 
ticipants often  feel  a  sense  of  disappointment, 
and  have  a  bad  taste  in  their  mouths. 

Another  and  quite  opposite  mood  is  one  of 
such  seriousness  as  to  shut  out  all  sense  of 
humor.  A  joke  causes  surprise,  not  laughter, 
and  a  touch  of  really  delicate  humor  goes  un- 
noticed. In  such  a  company,  if  you  happen  to 
indulge  in  a  gentle  bit  of  raillery,  you  are  made 
to  feel  at  once  as  if  you  had  acted  indecorously 
at  a  funeral. 

An  interesting  phase  is  what  may  be  called 
the  bored  mood — shown  in  some  specimens 
of  the  American  sophomore,  and  in  an  occa- 
sional young  person  who  has  traveled  and  seen 
much  of  the  world.  The  color  of  the  talk  is  of 
disapproval  and  fatigue ;  as  much  as  to  say, 
"  Why  will  you  tire  me  with  such  common- 
ness ?  "  Or  the  attitude  may  be  one  of  con- 
descension, as  if  to  say,  "  You  poor  thing — 
you  don't  know  any  better." 

Another  mood  is  that  exhibited  by  the 
American  college  boy  in  the  use  of  slang.  His 
swagger,  awkward  way  of  walking,  with  his 
hands  in  his  trousers  pockets,  lifting  up  his 
sack  coat,  and  his  pipe  in  his  mouth,  are  a  part 
of  the  same  fashion.  But  the  talk  that  goes 
with  it  all  is  perhaps  most  interesting,  for 
some  of  it  is  not  found  in  the  dictionary.     It 

43 


HUMAN   TALK 

is  decorated  with  peculiar  slang,  as,  when  the 
young  man  wishes  to  indicate  that  he  must 
go  to  his  supper  he  doesn't  say  that.  He  re- 
marks merely,  "  I've  got  to  go  and  feed  my 
face."  And  he  has  dozens  of  such  slang 
phrases  at  his  command,  which  he  uses  freely 
to  cover  a  sort  of  bash  fulness,  or  to  show  that 
he  is  a  real  fellow. 

An  interesting  fact  is  that  each  generation 
of  boys  has  a  different  set  of  slang  words  and 
shibboleths  from  every  other — not  a  set  that 
is  completely  different,  but  one  differing 
enough  to  show  the  evolution  of  the  catalogue 
of  slang,  which  to  some  degree  means  the  evo- 
lution of  the  language,  for  many  of  our  classi- 
cal words  began  life  as  slang.  Nor  are  these 
peculiarities  confined  to  the  boys,  for  the  girls 
of  the  period,  especially  among  clubs  and 
sororities  of  girls,  develop  slang  that  is  quite 
as  picturesque  as  that  of  the  boys,  if  a  little 
less  harsh  and  grating. 

Changes  of  fashion  in  words  and  phrases 
are  sought  and  followed  as  eagerly  as  we  fol- 
low the  fashion  in  hats  and  gowns.  The  old 
schoolmasters  seek  to  keep  the  language  as  it 
was,  but  that  is  impossible ;  you  might  as  well 
try  to  stop  the  tides  of  the  sea;  and  the  new 
fashions  in  words  and  phrases  are  often  the 
creation  of  the  youngest  generation,  who  are 

44 


HUMAN   TALK 

in  the  age  of  easy  experiment,  and  their  in- 
ventions are  at  first  all  slang;  later  they  are 
accorded,  usually  reluctantly,  admittance  to 
the  dictionary. 

The  bashful  mood  is  the  commonest  one  of 
all.  The  poor  victim  hunts  for  the  right  word 
and  nearly  always  gets  the  wrong  one,  and 
blushes  in  humiliation  whichever  one  he 
chooses.  He  cannot,  in  the  presence  of  people 
he  is  not  intimate  with,  divest  his  mind  of 
thought  about  himself,  and  of  whether  he  is 
saying  or  doing  the  proper  thing.  If  he  tries 
to  converse  with  you  he  is  constantly  thinking 
of  himself,  in  a  sort  of  gentle  egoism  tinged 
with  a  sadness  that  his  dull  mind  interprets  to 
him  as  self-abnegation.  He  is  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  victims  of  unperceived  conceit 
in  all  the  world. 

For  some  of  these  faults  of  talk  there  must 
be  a  remedy.  Until  that  Utopian  and  improb- 
able day  when  men  shall  see  themselves  and 
each  other  as  they  really  are,  we  cannot  ex- 
pect that  all  such  defects  can  be  discovered 
and  understood.  But  diffident  people  ought 
not  to  be  forced  almost  to  perish  because  of 
their  hardships  of  speech;  nor  is  it  necessary 
that  those  with  greater  gifts  should  sink  under 
the  burdens  of  the  conventional  demands  of 

45 


HUMAN    TALK 

talk.  The  woes  of  both  these  classes  are 
largely  imaginary  or  self-imposed  and  there- 
fore in  some  degree  correctible. 

The  common  sympathy  goes  out  naturally 
to  those  who  cannot  talk,  or  who  can  talk 
little;  but  I  feel  sure  that  the  other  class, 
those  who  have  great  powers,  but  great  bur- 
dens of  conversation,  are  entitled  to  our  more 
helpful  sympathy.  These  are  the  victims  of 
that  unwelcome  complex  of  symptoms  badly 
named  nervous  prostration.  They  are  always 
worse  by  having  to  entertain  others  much,  to 
be  polite  to  them,  to  find  conversation  and 
make  talk.  Some  of  them  get  faint,  have 
headache  and  hysteria,  sometimes  even  tem- 
porary blindness  from  these  burdens.  They 
fear  the  ordeal  of  meeting  people ;  they  shun 
them,  and  will  cross  to  the  opposite  side  of  the 
street  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  greeting  them ; 
they  worry  and  suffer  in  the  strain  of  their 
nerves  from  the  visits  and  interviews  they 
have  had,  and  live  in  trembling  dread  of  others 
yet  to  come.  They  grow  irascible ;  they  flare 
up  or  melt  into  tears  at  the  merest  trifles,  and 
then  grieve  at  their  weaknesses,  and  are  cha- 
grined at  their  faults. 

These  people  are  among  the  more  refined 
and  highly  civilized  of  the  race,  and  this  fact 
of  itself  should  entitle  them  to  sympathv.     A 

46 


HUMAN   TALK 

large  proportion  of  them  are  women.  Their 
high  refinement  is  a  misfortune.  They  really 
need  to  get  back  toward  primal  nature  for 
their  comfort  and  ease  of  living ;  but  since  that 
is  impossible,  they  must  bear  their  ills  with 
what  help  they  can  get.  A  great  deal  of  their 
trouble  is  wholly  needless,  and  a  sensible 
woman  may,  by  thought  and  self-control, 
avoid  nine  tenths  of  it.  But  the  thought  and 
self-control — that  is  the  difficulty ;  not  one 
woman  in  ten  is  equal  to  it,  even  if  she  knows 
the  need.  She  can  attain  this  end  only  by  first 
knowing  what  her  defect  is,  and  then  by  com- 
pelling herself  to  do  certain  definite  things  to 
overcome  it.  This  requires  a  large  stock  of 
courage  and  self-command  in  a  person  who 
is  usually  short  of  the  average  measure  of 
these  gifts.  The  real  first  trouble  is  her  own  in- 
tense sense  of  mental  pressure ;  of  a  duty  to 
entertain ;  a  fear  that  she  will  be  socially  criti- 
cised for  being  inattentive  or  for  saying  the 
wrong  or  inapt  thing,  or  for  being  ungracious. 
The  reason  of  all  this  is  largely  her  own  lack 
of  tranquillity,  courage,  and  poise ;  for  these 
qualities  are  indispensable  to  success.  If  she 
had,  or  could  create  for  herself,  a  quiet  spirit 
of  imperturbability,  all  her  troubles  would 
vanish  at  once.  If  she  had  ever  learned  the 
charm  and  power  of  silence   she  would  not 

47 


HUMAN   TALK 

have  this  or  any  other  sort  of  nervous  exhaus- 
tion; it  would  be  impossible.  That  her  fears 
about  herself  in  these  particulars  are  at  bottom 
rather  cowardly  than  otherwise  does  not  help 
matters — only  when  she  knows  that  cowardice 
is  an  essential  part  of  the  disease,  that  moment 
she  has  some,  if  a  small,  increment  of  strength 
to  overcome  it. 

The  thing  for  her  to  try  to  do  is  to  let  the 
other  woman — for  example,  the  caller — do 
most  of  the  talking ;  to  have  a  quiet  chat  with 
her,  not  on  stilts  or  from  a  pedestal,  but  down 
on  the  plain  earth,  and  about  common,  proper, 
simple  things ;  and  then  to  end  the  conversa- 
tion with  pleasure  that  the  friend  has  called, 
and  herself  be  free  from  the  usual  undercur- 
rent of  mental  discomfort  and  symptoms  of 
collapse. 

In  order  to  do  this  she  needs  to  make  for 
herself  a  few  rules  of  conduct  that  she  must 
obey  to  the  death.  If  she  is  a  very  nervous 
person  she  should  make  an  oath  to  herself  that 
she  will  follow  these  rules,  if  it  is  the  last  act 
of  her  life.  If  she  needs  the  rules  she  must 
herself  make  them,  and  then  stick  to  them. 
Such  a  code  she  might  roughly  formulate  as 
follows :  First,  I  will  be  natural  and  simple, 
not  stilted  and  false,  and  pretending  to  knowl- 
edge or  arts  that  are  beyond  me.     Second,  I 

48 


HUMAN   TALK 

will  not  hurry  in  my  talk ;  I  will  pause  and  be 
tranquil,  and  not  keep  my  mental  fists  doubled 
up  in  doing  it.  I  will  learn  to  be  silent  and 
not  let  this  make  me  unhappy.  Third,  I  will 
deliberately  use  my  art  of  hinting  and  quizzing 
to  set  my  guest  to  talking,  while  I  listen. 
Fourth,  I  will  be  amused  and  entertained  at 
my  own  efforts  in  thus  managing  my  caller 
and  myself ;  and  I  will  steel  my  soul  against 
any  after-suggestion  that  I  have  failed  or  been 
maladroit,  as  I  do  against  the  temptations  of 
the  devil. 

Anybody  who  goes  to  work  on  these  lines 
with  enough  courage  will  surely  find  his  re- 
ward. He  can  succeed  by  his  own  efiforts  and 
alone  if  he  will.  But  in  all  difficult  tasks  we 
are  helped  by  union  in  effort,  as  we  are  always 
helped  toward  any  goal  (and  especially  if  the 
goal  has  a  social  or  esthetic  quality)  by  the 
fact  that  others  are  traveling  in  the  same  di- 
rection. What  is  needed,  therefore,  is  a  move- 
ment in  numbers,  a  fashion,  a  cult,  toward  the 
end  sought.  A  society  or  club  having  this  for 
its  object  would  help  greatly,  if  its  numbers 
could  be  large  enough  to  create  a  fashion. 
And  if  the  needy  ones  only  knew  what  they 
could  gain  by  it  they  would  hasten  to  band 
themselves  together  for  this  purpose.  The 
name    of   the    organization    might   be   "  The 

49 


HUMAN    TALK 

Silence  Club,"  or  "  A  society  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  art  of  entertaining  with  a  mini- 
mum of  talk,"  or,  better  still,  "  The  Abo- 
rigines Club,"  because  it  would  cultivate  a 
stoicism  in  silence  like  that  of  the  American 
aborigines.  The  American  Indian  not  only 
entertains  others — if  he  does  entertain  them — 
in  almost  complete  silence,  but  he  seems  not 
to  be  embarrassed  by  the  fact  that  he  is  silent. 
He  ridicules  white  people  for  talking  so  much, 
as  he  does  for  using  so  many  words  in  their 
songs.  The  Indian  songs  consist  of  a  few  usu- 
ally plaintive  monosyllables — nothing  more; 
and  for  essential  musicalness,  they  have,  for 
this  reason,  a  distinct  advantage  over  our  poly- 
verbal  efforts.  How  profitably  some  of  us 
might  covet  a  little  of  this  gift  of  the  Indians ! 
When  you  come  to  think  of  it,  the  talking 
bouts  of  many  of  our  social  gatherings  are, 
from  numerous  points  of  view,  absurd.  If  you 
do  not  think  so,  then  some  day  hide  yourself 
where  you  can  be  a  silent  witness  to  one  of 
them.  Listen  for  an  hour,  and  see  if  you  do 
not  think  that,  with  half  the  words  and  more 
time  for  thought,  even  an  occasional  moment 
of  total  silence,  there  would  have  been  a  gain. 
Yet  the  capacity  to  take  part  and  help  create 
such  a  talking  bee  is  an  ambition  of  a  large 
number  of  people.    It  is  a  pity  only  when  it  is 

50 


HUMAN   TALK 

done  at  great  friction  of  soul  and  wear  and 
tear  of  nerves.  Another  misfortune  is  that  it 
tends  to  fix  the  habit  that  is  already  too  preva- 
lent, of  talking  first  and  thinking  afterward. 

The  recovery  from  this  particular  talk  dis- 
ease, as  already  indicated,  depends  much  on 
the  ability  of  the  victim  to  evoke  conversation 
by  others,  while  he  has  pleasure  in  holding  his 
tongue  and  keeping  his  own  powers  in  re- 
serve. And  that  ability  is  nothing  but  the  art 
of  making  conversation  easy.  This  art  is  a 
natural  gift  to  many  people,  and  is  the  envy 
of  almost  every  bashful,  diffident  and  self- 
conscious  person  in  or  out  of  enlightened  so- 
ciety. To  acquire  it,  to  become  adept  at  it, 
may  well  be  the  ambition  of  all  the  victims  of 
this  unfortunate  malady. 

Nor  is  the  art  difficult  or  hard  to  learn. 
Anybody  can  have  it  if  he  has  sufficient 
fortitude  and  self-control,  and  will  persist  in 
patience.  But  he  must  first  be  born  again 
to  a  few  cardinal  truths  that  are  always 
wholesome.  To  encourage  conversation  is  to 
bring  out  and  enlarge  the  powers  of  the 
other  person,  and  these  cardinal  truths  con- 
cern his  interest  and  fate  most  intimately. 
When  we  consider  the  good  of  the  other  per- 
son, we,  by  so  much,  sink  our  own  selfishness 
and  conceit — and  that,  besides  being  good  in 

51 


HUMAN   TALK 

itself,  is  the  true  key  to  the  art  of  conversation. 
To  think  of  the  other  person  and  his  needs  is 
an  act  of  genuine  altruism,  and  leads  us  not 
merely  away  from  our  own  selfishness,  but 
away  from  our  bashfulness  (which  is  a  phase 
of  selfishness),  so  that  our  powers  of  rational 
talk  increase.  This  kind  of  an  effort  is  thus 
a  means  of  grace ;  and  it  brings  us  surprising 
rewards.  It  is  a  missionary  movement  whose 
value  nobody  will  ever  question.  It  helps 
those  who  receive,  and  it  transfigures  those 
who  give. 

When  one  sets  out  in  this  sort  of  self-im- 
provement there  are  a  few  things  he  will  do, 
and  certain  things  he  will  very  positively  not 
do — and  wherein  he  will  be  differentiated 
from  the  average  man.  In  developing  a  better 
art  of  conversation  he  will  not  air  his  own 
things,  his  people,  his  gifts,  or  himself,  save  in 
the  most  tentative  way,  and  to  bring  out  the 
other  person.  He  will  hold  in  abeyance  the 
subjects  he  knows  most  of,  or  speak  of  them 
with  apologetic  hesitation,  and  seek  the  ones 
the  other  person  is  most  familiar  with.  He 
will  ask  gentle  questions  in  a  spirit  of  con- 
fidential deference  so  as  not  to  frighten  his 
friend,  for  questions  asked  in  a  conceited  or 
pushing  way  are  sure  to  scare  the  other  one 
dumb.     If  he  enters  into  real  controversy  the 

52 


HUMAN   TALK 

conversation  may  stop  suddenly ;  but  the  gen- 
tle raillery  of  sham  controversy  may  help  it 
on.  Too  intense  an  interest  in  the  subject  of 
the  talk  may  frighten  the  other  person,  as  it 
will  make  him  hesitate  to  change  the  topic 
when  he  is  tempted  to  do  so.  Quizzing,  jok- 
ing, or  ridiculing  another  often  stops  his  con- 
versation like  water  on  a  flame. 

Our  artist  in  talk  will  maintain  a  demure 
mood  of  interested,  rather  ignorant  inquiry, 
not  critical  or  protesting,  but  sympathetic  and 
indulgent.  He  will  not  in  this  go  to  the  op- 
posite extreme  of  trying  to  make  the  other  per- 
son do  all  the  talking,  or  allow  him  to  feel 
that  his  talk  is  taken  critically,  for  that  would 
soon  shut  him  up  like  a  clam.  He  will  change 
the  subject  of  conversation  as  needed,  so  as  to 
prevent  mental  fatigue,  and  save  the  talk  from 
running  dry.  He  will  not  decorate  his  part  of 
the  conversation  with  silly  giggles.  He  will 
learn  just  how  much  to  keep  silent,  how  much 
to  inquire,  how  much  to  tell  of  what  he  knows, 
how  much  to  defer,  in  order  to  put  the  other 
one  completely  at  his  ease  and  let  him  find  his 
tongue.  He  will  be  able  to  rise  to  large  things 
and  to  descend  to  small  and  simple  ones  with 
equal  ease  and  facility,  as  the  knowledge,  ig- 
norance, and  temper  of  the  other  person  seem 
to  require.    Thus  he  will  become  a  skilled  per- 

53 


HUMAN   TALK 

former  in  an  art  that  is  greater  than  any  of 
the  so-called  fine  arts,  because  it  helps  in  a 
larger  way  the  two  classes  of  people  who  are 
most  in  need  of  its  benefits,  those  who  can  talk 
and  ought  to  listen,  and  those  who  would  lis- 
ten and  ought  to  talk. 

While  he  does  these  things  he  is  submerg- 
ing his  own  conceits  and  egoism,  forgetting 
his  own  bashfulness,  and  coming  to  be  himself 
at  ease.  Thereby  he  makes  a  distinct  growth 
in  versatility  for  himself ;  he  broadens  his  own 
horizon  and  makes  his  attainments  worthy  of 
his  own  pride.  Better  than  all  else,  he  ac- 
quires a  mood  of  mind  and  a  serenity  of  spirit 
that  will  contribute  powerfully  to  his  own  per- 
manent comfort  and  force.  At  the  same  time 
the  other  person  learns  to  talk  almost  with- 
out knowing  it,  and  warms  with  joy  at  his  own 
expanding  powers.  Soon,  too,  he  discovers 
that  even  his  rude  grasp  of  this  new  art  gives 
him  fresh  vantage  for  higher  attainments.  He 
has  found  the  key  to  other  arts  beyond. 


54 


The  Blind  Side  of  the  Average 
Parent 


The  Blind  Side  of  the  Average 
Parent 


Parents  naturally  think  they  best  under- 
stand their  own  young  children,  but  usually 
they  do  not.  Most  of  them  would  probably  re- 
gard such  a  doubt  as  a  great  deal  worse  than 
absurd.  The  contention  that  they  who  are  the 
daily  companions  of  their  children  do  not  and 
cannot  read  them  truly,  that  childless  people 
understand  them  better,  would  probably  strike 
the  mind  of  the  average  parent  as  a  piece  of 
harmless  sophistry.  Yet  this  blindness  is  so 
real  that  the  demonstration  stares  every  care- 
ful observer  full  in  the  face.  Even  a  cursory 
study  of  the  daily  Hves  of  a  lot  of  small  children 
shows  that  some  of  the  strongest  emotions 
which  influence  conduct  are  wholly  unper- 
ceived  by  their  parents,  although  the  emotions 
are  perfectly  apparent  and  easily  seen  by 
the  most   casual  observation.     And   the   chil- 

57 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

dren  and  the  parents  reveal  the  situation  about 
equally,  and  quite  unconsciously.  These  emo- 
tions not  only  govern  the  actions  for  the  hour 
and  the  day,  but,  persisting  and  growing  for  a 
long  time,  as  they  are  apt  to  do,  they  order 
and  govern  the  whole  course  of  the  lives  of 
such  children,  sometimes  probably  to  their 
benefit,  but  often  to  their  harm. 

The  peculiar  conduct  of  the  children  re- 
ferred to  is  neither  hidden  nor  mysterious; 
everybody  about  them  knows  of  it.  But  it  is 
usually  ascribed  to  mental  impulses  wholly 
different  from  the  true  ones ;  the  real  basis  of 
it  is  as  foreign  to  the  minds  of  ninety-nine  per 
cent  of  the  children's  care-takers  and  parents 
as  are  the  problems  of  calculus.  Yet  the  com- 
plete proof  is  as  plain  as  the  earth  we  walk 
upon,  and  could  not  be  hidden  by  any  amount 
of  effort,  and  never  is  hidden ;  only  the  parent, 
and  usually  the  nurse,  refuses  or  fails  to  see  it. 

Parents  know  a  great  many  things  about 
their  children,  and  know  these  things  inti- 
mately and  often  in  minute  detail.  They 
know,  for  example,  that  a  child  likes  certain 
amusements  and  particular  things  to  eat  and 
drink;  also  that  he  neither  likes  to  go  to  bed 
nor  to  get  up  early.  A  mother  can  usually  tell 
you  why  her  small  child  asks  for  a  drink  of 
water — it  is  thirsty.    She  knows  that  if  it  asks 

58 


OF   THE    AVERAGE    PARENT 

for  a  piece  of  bread  and  butter  it  is  probably 
hungry ;  and  she  may  feel  equally  certain  of 
this  if  it  is  pie  the  child  asks  for,  although  per- 
haps the  motive  is,  in  this  case,  nine  tenths  a 
desire  for  a  sweet  taste  and  one  tenth  hunger. 
Her  knowledge  of  motives  is  fairly  accurate 
when  her  boy  asks  to  go  and  play  with  other 
boys,  and  she  knows  that  she  knows  why. 

But  when  the  boy  has  spent  an  hour  with 
her  in  friendship  and  mutual  entertainment, 
in  even  loving  comradery  as  the  pleasantest 
and  most  tractable  of  children,  and  then  some 
visitors  appear  and  the  boy  becomes  a  changed 
being,  and  begins  to  hammer  her  fine  furni- 
ture, and  interrupt  the  conversation  to  ask  her 
a  dozen  questions  which  she  had  answered  ten 
minutes  before,  then  she  is  either  uncertain 
that  she  knows  why,  or  she  attributes  the 
change  to  some  wayward  tendency  which  she 
is  glad  to  have  the  comfort  of  thinking  be- 
longs to  all  boys.  She  never  guesses  the  true 
motive,  which  is  an  egoistic  greed  for  atten- 
tion to  himself,  a  conceited  jealousy  of  atten- 
tion to  others.  When  she  is  talking  interest- 
edly to  a  caller  and  the  boy  pulls  at  her  gown 
to  ask  her  to  do  some  needless  thing  for  him, 
and  when  he  throws  his  blocks  and  papers  on 
the  floor,  and  then  declines  to  pick  them  up 
at    her   request    or  command    (after   having 

59 


THE   BLIND   SIDE 

promptly  and  repeatedly  picked  them  up  with- 
out a  protest  while  alone  with  her),  then  she 
thinks  it  is  original  sin,  or  that  it  is  a  punish- 
ment visited  upon  her  for  some  unconscious 
sin  or  omission  of  her  own.  Not  once  in  a 
thousand  cases  does  such  a  mother  divine  the 
real  cause  of  the  mischief,  and  apply  any  ade- 
quate remedy  for  it — and  the  real  cause  is 
plain  beyond  question ;  it  is  clear  to  the  sim- 
plest observation,  and  proven  by  the  memory 
of  every  man  who  reflects  candidly  upon  his 
own  childhood. 

It  is  a  doctrine  of  a  modern  cult  in  the  care 
of  children  that  curiosity  and  a  thirst  for 
knowledge  on  their  part  are  laudable  impulses, 
and  to  be  encouraged.  It  is  a  good  doctrine. 
A  man  looks  back  to  his  boyhood  and  recalls 
that  then  he  was  often  rebuffed  by  his  elders 
when  he  asked  questions  from  a  desire  to 
learn ;  so  he  makes  the  generous  resolve  that 
his  child  shall  never  be  treated  thus,  and  he 
develops  the  habit  of  answering,  as  well  as  his 
knowledge  permits,  every  question  his  young- 
sters ask.  He  sees  them  grow  in  knowl- 
edge of  people  and  things,  and  he  is  happy; 
moreover  he  is  a  little  proud  of  having  helped 
his  children  in  this  way.  But  he  has  become 
such  a  slave  to  his  own  habit,  that  it  has  ac- 
quired the  quality  of  obedience;  and   so  his 

60 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

boy,  not  very  far  beyond  babyhood,  learns 
readily  that,  although  his  requests  of  his  father 
for  general  indulgences  are  often  refused,  if 
his  desires  are  put  in  the  form  of  questions 
apparently  asked  for  the  sake  of  knowledge, 
he  is  promptly  obeyed.  Yes,  obeyed  is  the 
word.  The  same  questions  will  be  answered 
for  the  fortieth  time  within  an  hour,  as  though 
the  child  had  suddenly  become  mentally  dull 
and  had  forgotten  the  other  thirty-nine  times ; 
then  the  father,  from  sheer  fatigue  at  the 
monotony,  is  ready  to  obey  the  child  in  other 
things — ^to  get  him  toys,  and  do  things  to 
amuse  him,  to  tell  stories  or  sing  songs  or  do 
any  sort  of  an  absurd  thing  that  will  satisfy 
his  offspring. 

It  is  only  a  short  step  from  this  experience 
of  the  child  to  the  discovery  that  his  parents 
dread  to  make  a  scene  by  efforts  at  his  dis- 
cipline in  the  sight  and  hearing  of  strangers 
and  persons  outside  of  the  family.  So  he  plans 
to  gain  some  point  in  the  presence  of  company 
and  usually  succeeds.  He  feels  a  sense  of  su- 
periority in  his  knowledge  of  this  cowardice 
of  his  elders,  and  he  works  it  to  the  utmost. 
Thus  he  becomes  an  autocrat.  His  parents 
are  under  a  degree  of  slavery  to  him  that  is  as 
perfectly  marked  out  and  defined  as  any  other 
fact  in  nature.    They  may  be  severe  with  him 

6i 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

in  certain  things ;  for  example,  his  moral  con- 
duct, as  they  measure  it,  and  especially  certain 
phases  of  his  social  deportment ;  but  in  this 
particular  field  he  is  their  complete  master,  and 
he  knows  it.  They  may  chide  him  severely  for 
his  unkempt  hair  and  dirty  finger  nails,  and 
for  not  saying  "  please,"  but  he  has  his  way 
and  his  revenge  upon  them  when  strangers  are 
near.  And  he  maintains  this  mastery  till  he 
passes  out  of  young  childhood  and  often  be- 
yond. 

A  Philadelphia  boy  of  perhaps  eight  years 
fell  and  suffered  a  cut  in  his  forehead.  He 
was  taken  by  his  father  to  the  family  doctor 
to  have  the  wound  dressed.  The  doctor  told 
him  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  suture  the 
cut.  The  boy  instantly  began  to  cry  vocifer- 
ously. His  father  commanded  him  to  stop 
crying,  and  told  him  he  was  disturbing  the 
neighborhood.  The  boy  cried  the  louder ;  his 
sire  scolded  the  more  insistently.  Then  the 
boy  looked  up  and  said :  "  What  is  there  in  it 
for  me?  "  The  father  replied :  "  Fifty  cents  "  ; 
the  boy  said :  "  Make  it  a  dollar  " ;  the  father 
replied :  "  All  right,  a  dollar.  Now  stop  your 
noise."  The  boy  then  became  quiet,  and  he 
endured  the  surgery  without  a  murmur.  He 
was  so  brave  about  it  that  he  was  allowed  to 
go  alone  to  the  doctor  the  next  day  to  have  the 

62 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

wound  redressed.  Then  the  doctor  gently  ral- 
lied him  on  having  got  his  father  down  to  a 
commercial  basis,  when  the  boy  said  in  re- 
sponse :  "  It  was  so  easy  that  I'm  sorry  I  didn't 
strike  him  for  two  dollars  instead  of  one." 
This  is  a  good  illustrative  example  of  the  effi- 
cient discipline  under  which  a  boy  may,  even 
in  his  eighth  year,  bring  his  parent,  when  he 
has  the  right  sort  of  skill,  and  enough  of  the 
thing  familiarly  called  nerve. 

Now,  the  main  impelling  motive  of  the  child 
in  all  this  (and  the  type  is  a  common  one)  is 
the  love  of  attention  and  of  being  thought  su- 
perior, smart,  handsome,  or  wonderful ;  and 
there  is  of  course,  as  a  secondary  motive,  the 
desire  to  carry  his  personal  point,  whatever  it 
is ;  this  means  the  love  of  power  or  the  desire 
to  outdo  others — which  is  the  main  basis  of 
the  propensity  for  cruelty  which  most  children 
have  in  some  degree.  The  chief  motive  is  to 
show  off,  to  strut ;  and  it  makes  him  do  a  hun- 
dred things  in  the  presence  of  strangers  that 
he  would  never  think  of  when  alone  or  with 
those  intimate  with  him.  Sometimes  it  leads 
him  to  queer,  unusual,  and  even  uncanny  per- 
formances to  attract  attention ;  and  these  tac- 
tics he  often  carries  on  for  years,  and  occa- 
sionally toward  or  quite  into  adult  life. 

Once  there  was  a  little  boy  who  was  pale 

63 


THE   BLIND   SIDE 

and  thin,  and  had  a  poor  appetite.  His  con- 
dition aroused  the  interest  and  the  soHcitude 
of  all  his  family  and  of  some  of  his  neighbors ; 
the  boy  was  an  object  of  wonder  because  he 
ate  so  little.  How  could  he  live  on  so  little 
food !  A  bird  would  eat  as  much  as  he !  This 
made  the  boy  feel  important;  he  liked  the  at- 
tention; being  the  object  of  such  interest 
tickled  his  conceit.  So  he  continued  his  semi- 
starvation  for  many  months.  He  did  occa- 
sionally take  food  from  the  larder  surrepti- 
tiously, but  he  was  thin,  shy,  and  a  little  queer, 
with  few  of  the  normal  child  activities,  till  his 
maturity  put  new  life  and  vigor  into  him,  and 
he  evolved  out  of  this  particular  foolishness. 
Later  he  confessed  his  part  in  the  deception. 
In  a  moment  of  humiliation  he  told  one  of  his 
confidants  how  he  had  kept  up  the  deception 
till  his  wholesome  hunger  became  more  to  him 
than  his  morbid  pleasure. 

Such  a  case  as  this  is  not  wonderful;  it  is 
not  even  uncommon  in  human  experience. 
Only  most  people  have  supposed  that  such 
mental  pathology  is  confined  to  hysterical 
women.  The  latter  do  sometimes  practice  this 
kind  of  deception  for  sympathy  and  attention, 
and  for  years  continuously.  But  the  egoistic 
emotionalism  of  children  of  both  sexes  also 
tends  to  this  peculiar  morbidness.     In  many 

64 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

cerebrally  unstable  children  the  tendency  is  so 
strong,  the  avidity  for  attention  is  so  intense, 
that  the  sHghtest  indulgence  leads  to  a  rapid 
growth  of  the  moral  deformity,  unless — what 
is  most  unusual — it  is  counteracted  by  some 
friendly  help  in  the  opposite  direction. 

I  once  knew  of  a  young  girl  who  for  some 
years  lived  in  three  distinct  and  different  moral 
existences.  These  phases  appeared  in  various 
relations  to  each  other,  and  she  often  showed 
two,  and  sometimes  all  three  of  them,  in  a 
single  day.  One  of  these  personalities  was  the 
natural,  sweet  child,  free  from  affectation,  and 
normal  in  behavior,  that  she  was  capable  of 
being.  Another  phase  showed  her  as  a  preco- 
cious child  with  a  religious  bent,  writing  simple 
little  essays  which  expressed  deep  contrition 
for  her  sins,  but  did  not  specify  them.  These 
writings  were  the  wonder  of  her  friends,  who 
were  also  greatly  troubled  about  her  sins.  The 
latter  were  very  real,  and  she  committed  them 
in  the  third  phase  of  her  life.  They  consisted 
of  a  succession  of  petty  thievings,  mostly  of 
candies  and  other  sweetmeats. 

She  always  had  with  her  in  her  exploits  one 
or  more  of  her  younger  playmates,  with  whom 
she  divided  the  plunder,  and  they  all  enjoyed 
it  together.  This  participation  closed  the 
mouths  of  her  mates  against  telling,  while  they 

65 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

wondered  at  her  nerve,  and  regarded  her 
abandon  as  evidence  of  a  superior  being.  She 
gloried  in  their  wonder,  while  they  ate  her 
stolen  goods.  Her  parents  and  friends  were 
proud  of  her  precocity,  and  were  touched  by 
her  contrition.  So  her  vanity  and  love  of  at- 
tention were  gratified,  while  she  looked  for 
fresh  petting,  and  fresh  trust  after  each  esca- 
pade and  repentance.  When  she  was  severely 
punished,  as  she  was  once  or  twice,  the  little 
manuscripts  grew  more  religious  and  more 
self-lashing,  which  led  to  more  melting  on  the 
part  of  her  parents  and  friends.  This  latter 
fact  pleased  her  and  was  fresh  evidence  of  her 
power  and  of  her  dubious  triumphs. 

This  was  an  extreme  case  of  egoistic  mor- 
bidness, of  love  of  personal  enlargement,  of 
self-importance,  and  of  the  most  abandoned 
selfishness;  really  it  was  in  the  borderland  of 
degeneracy.  But  not  a  friend  or  parent  of  the 
child  had  the  slightest  grasp  of  the  real  emo- 
tions that  were  behind  all  this  erratic  conduct. 
Each  one  had  some  visionary  theory  by  which 
he  tried  to  explain  it ;  his  theory  perhaps  satis- 
fied him,  but  it  was  no  explanation,  and  only 
served  to  show  his  own  credulity,  and  perhaps 
his  forgetfulness  of  the  experiences  of  his  own 
childhood. 

Such  parental  credulity  is,  as  a  psychologic 

66 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

fact,  as  interesting  as  the  egoistic  perform- 
ances of  the  children ;  and  it  harms  the  parents 
and  children  aUke.  It  wrongs  the  parents  be- 
cause it  leads  them  to  acts  of  omission  and 
commission  that  are  grossly  unfair  to  the  chil- 
dren. Every  parent  would  like  to  do  the  best 
for  his  child,  and  so  to  act  as  to  insure  to  it 
the  largest  career  of  usefulness  and  joy.  But 
his  blindness  leads  him  to  foster  and  cultivate 
in  the  child  a  lot  of  the  most  harmful  morbid 
impulses.  Thereby  he,  the  parent,  misses  one 
of  the  finest  opportunities  for  doing  good  that 
ever  comes  to  a  human  being. 

To  the  child  these  tendencies  are  demoral- 
izing in  the  extreme.  His  mental  concentra- 
tion upon  his  own  person  and  pleasures,  and 
the  growth  of  his  egoistic  life  beget  a  state 
of  emotional  exaltation  and  nervous  erethism 
that  is  fatal  to  any  high  degree  of  stability  of 
his  brain.  The  sanest  and  most  satisfying 
happiness  in  life  is  forever  denied  him. 

Every  such  child  is  handicapped ;  his  career 
is  blighted  to  a  foregone  certainty ;  he  is  never 
as  efficient  or  useful  as  otherwise  he  would  be, 
or  as  he  deserves  to  be;  and  he  falls  behind 
his  fellows  in  all  the  best  ambitions. 

From  your  lodging  window  you  may  per- 
chance look  down  on  the  back  yard  of  a  poor 
family,  th€  chief  playground  of  some  children. 

67 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

There  you  shall  see  a  little  boy  playing  with 
a  few  sticks  and  utensils  that  serve  as  toys. 
He  "  rides  "  a  broomstick,  and  for  the  moment 
he  is  in  fancy  a  horseman,  maybe  a  mounted 
soldier.  He  has  no  store  toys  that  cost  money. 
His  only  companion,  for  the  time,  is  his 
mother,  working  in  the  kitchen  and  speaking 
to  him  occasionally  from  the  open  door.  Pres- 
ently he  is  thirsty  and  hungry,  and  he  goes  in 
and  gets  himself  a  drink  of  water,  and  his 
mother  gives  him  a  piece  of  bread  blackened 
with  molasses.  Soon  he  goes  out  again  and 
begins  to  play,  but  before  long  a  feeling  of 
drowsiness  creeps  over  him,  and  he  lays  aside 
his  playthings,  lays  himself  down,  and  is 
soon  fast  in  the  arms  of  a  quiet  slumber. 
His  mother  puts  a  folded  garment  under  his 
head  for  a  pillow.  In  an  hour  he  wakens 
refreshed  and  cheerful,  and  is  ready  for  play 
again. 

Maybe  your  other  window  looks  out  upon 
the  well-furnished  back  yard  of  a  rich  family. 
There  too  is  a  little  boy  at  play.  He  has  many 
toys,  some  expensive  ones,  and  he  is  playing 
with  them.  There  is  a  young  woman  with 
him.  She  is  not  his  mother,  but  a  child's  nurse, 
whose  ostensible  business  is  to  see  that  his 
needs  are  all  provided  for ;  that  he  is  clothed 
and  guarded  from  harm ;  but  chieflv  she  sees, 

68 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

and  is  instructed  to  see,  that  he  is  entertained. 
She  is  his  servant,  although  she  thinks  she  is 
his  mother's  servant.  She  obeys  him  im- 
pHcitly,  save  in  a  few  cardinal  things  which 
his  mother  has  forbidden.  But  his  mother 
never  forbids  his  being  constantly  amused  by 
others  at  his  command — the  thing  that  tends 
to  nervous  destruction.  The  boy  plays  quietly 
for  a  while;  then  he  is  hungry  and  is  fed. 
Next  he  begins  some  new  game  or  play,  and 
soon  tires  of  it.  Then  he  tells  the  girl  to  help 
him  about  another,  and  she  obeys.  Soon  he 
tires  of  that;  then  he  turns  to  another,  then 
another  and  still  another,  and  he  tires  of  them 
all  successively,  and  grows  irritable  with  his 
fatigue.  With  each  change  he  is  more  intense 
and  nervous,  and  each  successive  change  di- 
verts him  for  a  shorter  time.  Finally,  dissatis- 
fied with  the  plays  which  she  has  devised,  he 
commands  her  to  invent  others,  and  she  tries 
to,  but  none  of  her  devices  will  do;  then  he 
demands  a  dozen  impossible  things,  like  horses 
and  cars.  She  cannot  provide  them,  and  if  she 
could  he  would  not  enjoy  them  for  more  than 
a  moment,  for  he  has  reached  the  end  of  his 
resources  of  nervous  energy.  He  is  in  a 
frenzy  of  superstimulation  and  hysteria,  and 
cries  with  a  mixture  of  grief  and  anger.  Then 
the  nurse  takes  him  in  her  arms  and  walks 

69 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

with  him,  tells  him  a  story  or  hums  a  tune, 
till  finally  he  stops  crying,  ceases  to  complain, 
and  falls  asleep.  He  is  carried  to  a  soft 
couch,  but  he  talks  in  his  sleep  from  bad 
dreams,  and  after  a  while  wakens  in  a  nervous 
and  unhappy  mood,  with  a  bad  memory  of  his 
latest  pre-slumber  experience.  He  wakens  to 
go  through  the  same  damaging  program 
again ;  and  this  is  oft  repeated,  with  some  vari- 
ations, through  most  of  the  years  of  the  apron- 
string  time  of  his  life. 

And  the  mother  seldom  discovers  that  this 
constant  entertainment  by  others,  this  ever- 
lasting stimulation  at  his  demand,  this  contin- 
uous vaudeville,  is  harmful  to  the  child.  It 
has  never  entered  her  head  that  the  perpetual 
pandering  to  a  child's  love  of  amusement  may 
mean  a  weak  manhood  or  chronic  invalidism. 
I  have  known  a  mother  to  discharge  a  good, 
quiet,  and  responsible  nurse  girl,  because  she 
was  unable  to  invent  enough  kinds  of  amuse- 
ment for  her  boy.  The  boy  did  not  like  her 
for  that  reason,  and  that  was  enough  for  the 
mother.  She  would  have  a  nurse  that  the  boy 
liked,  if  money  could  hire  her,  and  of  course 
he  liked  the  one  who  would  give  him  the  larg- 
est measure  of  the  play  that  pleased  him ;  and 
this  play  was  the  most  thrilling  and  exciting 
that  was  possible. 

70 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

The  one  fortunate  thing  for  that  boy  was 
the  fact  that  in  a  few  years  he  would  grow 
and  develop  out  of  the  nurse-girl  period  and 
into  the  saving  association  of  other  boys,  even 
if  it  meant  many  violent  adventures  and  many 
cuts  and  bruises.  Better  a  thousand  times 
that,  better  rough  games  with  their  dangers 
of  deathj  than  a  continuance  in  this  intoxicat- 
ing life. 

Pleasure  in  some  sort  is  the  supreme  yearn- 
ing of  human  nature.  As  a  present  experi- 
ence it  is  a  hint  of  heaven;  in  anticipation  it 
lightens  the  burdens  of  the  day;  and  it  may 
be  a  continuous  if  a  lessening  joy  to  look  back 
upon.  But  pursued  as  a  business  it  eventually 
disturbs  brain  stability  and  emotional  balance. 
It  makes  for  weakness  in  the  severe  function, 
unavoidable  to  most  of  us,  called  the  struggle 
for  existence.  A  child  is  full  of  imagination, 
and  self-indulgence  is  his  first  law ;  we  should 
never  shut  our  eyes  to  this  fact.  When  left 
to  himself  he  will,  quite  enough  for  his  good, 
make  pleasure  to  be  his  chief  concern;  it  is 
when  to  his  native  impulses  in  this  direction 
is  superimposed  by  the  connivance  of  others 
a  systematic  and  long-continued  stimulation 
of  his  fun-loving  faculty,  that  his  other  powers 
are  likely  to  shrivel.  Then  his  joy  becomes 
pathologic    and    unwholesome,   his    emotional 

71 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

equilibrium  is  broken,  and  he  is  preparing  for 
nervous  collapse  later  in  life. 

In  all  history  there  is  hardly  an  example  of 
a  man  great  in  the  affairs  of  men,  who  grew 
up  as  an  only  child  in  his  family.  What  can 
be  the  explanation  of  this  fact?  Certainly  it 
is  not  poor  hereditary  influences  or  lack  of 
the  usual  educational  advantages  in  childhood 
or  youth ;  the  only  child  usually  has  many  in- 
dulgences denied  to  one  of  a  numerous  family. 
But  often,  if  not  usually,  he  has  the  blight  of 
a  child's  overdeveloped  emotionalism,  and  he 
lacks  something  of  the  strength-giving  influ- 
ence that  comes  of  a  family  life  with  other 
children.  He  is  more  apt  than  other  children 
to  live  on  the  love  and  service  he  demands ; 
he  never  grows  by  that  which  he  gives ;  and 
he  becomes  progressively  worse  till  a  new 
birth  of  maturity  opens  his  eyes.  But  by  that 
time  his  nervous  exaltation  may  have  become 
a  fixed  cerebral  state  that  in  some  degree  lasts 
through  life,  and  is  a  perpetual  mortgage  upon 
the  promise  of  his  success.  It  is  a  certain 
neglect,  as  well  as  the  obligation  to  share,  that 
saves ;  and  the  children  of  a  more  numerous 
family  often  have  perforce  something  of  both 
these  wholesome  influences,  and  so  a  blessed 
salvation  from  ills  that  come  to  the  less  for- 
tunate. 

72 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

The  only  child  is  usually  overemphasized 
in  every  way  that  blind  and  solicitous  parents 
can  devise.  They  provide  for  all  the  real 
wants  that  they  think  of,  they  protect  him 
from  danger,  they  guard  him  as  far  as  they 
can  against  every  obstacle,  and  make  him  as 
nearly  useless  as  possible.  They  deprive  him 
to  some  degree  of  the  greatest  mint  of  pleas- 
ure he  can  have,  which  is  the  equal  compan- 
ionship of  other  children.  Worse  than  this, 
they  rob  him  of  the  benefits  that  always  come 
from  equal  contests  and  struggles  and  inven- 
tions with  others.  Life  with  other  children 
amounts  to  a  manual  training  course.  The 
child  who  can  have  this  has  a  long  lead  of 
other  children ;  lacking  it,  the  only  child  in  the 
family  suffers.  His  environment  prevents  him 
from  knowing  the  real  world  till  late  in  his 
childhood,  because  he  fails  to  mix  freely  on 
equal  terms  with  his  normal  real  world,  which 
is  a  world  of  childhood ;  he  is  outdistanced  by 
his  fellows;  he  never  quite  catches  up.  He 
rarely  or  never  enters  early  into  the  vigor- 
making  tussle  of  the  world,  to  bear  privations 
and  learn  to  do  things  with  few  tools ;  to  bear 
and  forbear,  to  share  and  to  serve. 

His  life  tends  to  egoism  and  conceit,  as  he 
learns  to  manage  and  deceive  his  parents. 
Really  inferior  to  the  similar  child  of  a  nu- 

73 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

merous  family,  he  fancies  himself  superior  be- 
cause he  has  more  attention  and  indulgences, 
and  is  made  more  useless,  and  so  he  fails  to 
improve  as  he  might,  and  he  grows  more  un- 
commendable.  Usually  able  to  command  the 
attention  of  his  elders  and  get  their  favors,  it 
would  be  a  miracle  if  he  did  not  grow  in  con- 
ceit and  self-emphasis.  As  a  rule,  when  a  child 
comes  to  live  on  equal  terms  with  other  chil- 
dren, he  soon  finds  that  there  are  no  special 
favors  for  him;  he  must  be  truly  democratic, 
and  the  notion  that  he  is  an  aristocrat  is 
promptly  taken  out  of  him,  not  seldom  with 
a  shock  that  he  never  forgets.  His  conceit  is 
trampled  on  in  cruel  fashion,  but  always  to  his 
final  and  lasting  benefit.  Verily,  the  only  child 
of  a  family  is  usually  entitled  to  more  pity  and 
genuine  charity  than  most  of  the  gamins  of  the 
street.  A  few  parents  in  a  thousand  are  wise 
enough,  thoughtful  and  courageous  enough, 
with  their  "  only  child  "  to  spare  him  the  usual 
effects  of  such  a  calamity ;  and  such  parents 
are  among  the  really  great  people  of  the 
world. 

The  ministry  of  patience  is  divine.  Happi- 
ness comes  to  us  very  much  in  proportion  to 
the  simplicity  of  our  desires  and  the  fewness 
of  our  wants.  Growth  and  strength  are  the 
offspring  of  a  certain  degree  of  privation.    It 

74 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

is  demoralizing  to  a  child  to  know  that  he  can 
have  most  things  that  he  desires;  for  so  his 
desires  expand  and  multiply,  and  become  ex- 
acting and  petty.  Then  he  becomes  an  auto- 
crat without  knowing  it,  and  thereby  makes 
himself  step  by  step  unfit  to  bear  the  pitiless 
shocks  that  are  inevitable  in  the  rivalries  of 
life  and  the  struggles  for  personal  success. 

In  proportion  as  a  child  becomes  an  auto- 
crat is  his  future  harmed  and  the  totality  of 
his  joy  through  life  lessened.  There  is  no  ex- 
ception to  this  rule.  In  almost  the  exact  pro- 
portion that  he  learns  to  serve  and  wait  does 
he  become  strong  for  manhood  and  fitted  for 
power  and  enjoyment.  This  truth  is  as  con- 
stant as  the  stars.  And  most  forceful  children 
will  early  become  autocrats  if  allowed  to. 
They  are  powerless,  by  their  own  initiative, 
to  prevent  it.  Nothing  can  save  them  but  help 
from  without,  or  the  accidents  of  life,  among 
which  are  poverty  and  the  need  of  dividing 
their  favors  with  other  children. 

The  marks  of  the  autocrat  in  a  child  are  un- 
mistakable. Note  the  positiveness  with  which 
he  demands  things  when  he  is  really  aroused ; 
and  note  the  surprise  when  he  finds  he  cannot 
have  them.  It  is  not  the  surprise  of  a  self- 
restrained  child  with  the  saving  power  of 
bashfulness  just  coming  on  to  annoy  and  pro- 

75 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

tect  him ;  it  is  the  surprise  of  a  caged  and  en- 
raged animal. 

A  Httle  girl  once  got  herself  wedged  in  be- 
tween two  chairs  and  was  for  the  moment  un- 
able to  extricate  herself.  She  called  out  to  her 
mother  to  come.  The  mother,  seeing  that  the 
child  was  unharmed,  came  slowly.  Then  the 
youngster  yelled  viciously  and  in  intense  an- 
ger for  her  mother  to  hurry.  It  was  a  yell  that 
would  be  impossible  to  any  child  not  accus- 
tomed to  be  obeyed.  It  was  not  a  cry  of  fear 
or  despair  or  a  piteous  cry  for  help,  but  a  spite- 
ful screech  that  told  plainly  how  that  child 
was  wont  to  be  obeyed  by  her  mother.  She 
would  have  shown  more  patience  with  a 
stranger  or  another  child  whom  she  might 
have  asked  to  help  her. 

Anyone  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  study 
a  hundred  small  children  as  to  their  crying 
spells  will  make  some  interesting  discoveries. 
The  spells  may  be  classified  as  to  their  causa- 
tion. They  are  due  to  physical  discomfort ;  or 
to  fright,  to  grief  at  deprivation,  or  disap- 
pointment of  a  sentimental  and  not  physical 
sort;  or  to  a  sense  of  injured  dignity.  Chil- 
dren differ  in  their  crying  as  in  everything 
else ;  some  cry  little,  others  much.  Those  who 
cry  much  have  emotional  natures  that  are 
more   intense  and  unstable.     Those  who  cry 

76 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

little  are  fortunate  in  good  nerves  or  freedom 
from  friction  with  their  environment ;  or  they 
are  stoics.  The  child  who  cries  much  is  either 
a  great  sufferer  or  has  a  temperament  that  is 
too  emotional;  and  he  who  cries  often  from 
ruffled  dignity  has  an  unhealthy  egoism  with 
cowardice,  and  a  poor  promise  for  future  sta- 
bility. This  last  frequently  means,  in  this 
country  at  least,  a  very  much  indulged  child. 
The  little  girl  who  fell  between  the  chairs  was 
furious,  and  cried  from  injured  dignity,  not 
from  pain.  In  the  absence  of  caste  in  this 
country  little  children  are  rarely  taught  a 
sense  of  dignity  that  they  feel  impelled  to  de- 
fend. But  they  acquire  it  by  finding  that  they 
are  obeyed.  The  love  of  power  is  as  precious 
to  a  child  as  to  a  man ;  it  makes  one  jealous  of 
its  safety,  and  it  grows  by  what  it  feeds  upon, 
among  rich  and  poor  alike. 

A  small  boy  was  forbidden  to  go  into  a 
neighboring  high-fenced  yard  and  shut  the 
gate.  The  gate  was  self-locking,  and  if  it 
closed  behind  him,  some  one  had  to  come  from 
the  house  and  let  him  out.  It  was  a  child's 
adventure  for  him  to  go  into  the  yard  and  have 
his  mother  come  after  him ;  and  he  tested  his 
power  by  experimenting  with  her.  He  soon 
found  that  each  time  he  called  to  her  from  be- 
hind the  closed  gate,  she  would  loyally  come 

77 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

and  liberate  him — each  time  telling  him  that 
he  must  never  do  so  again.  One  day  when  he 
called  her  she  could  not  come,  but  sent  her 
cook.  Then  he  flared  up,  stamped  his  feet  and 
screamed  in  fury  because  his  mother  had  not 
come  to  him.  His  dignity  was  affronted,  his 
demands  had  been  neglected. 

No  child  would  make  such  a  scene  on  a  first 
experience  of  this  sort.  The  explosion  came 
of  a  mental  habit  born  of  many  hundreds  of 
similar  tests  that  proved  to  him  that  he  could 
depend  on  his  elders  to  jump  to  his  call.  His 
autocratic  tendency  and  so  his  dignity — ready 
to  be  hurt — was  a  growth  of  many  months. 

A  precocious  and  much  petted  little  girl 
lived  for  a  time  in  the  house  of  her  uncle  and 
aunt.  She  was  fond  of  her  aunt,  who  took 
care  of  her,  and  who  always  came  to  her  in  the 
night  when  she  usually  wakened  and  asked 
for  a  drink  of  water.  So  each  night  witnessed 
a  little  visit  with  her  aunt  and  some  petting. 
One  night  the  aunt  was  sick  and  the  uncle 
brought  her  the  drink,  but  she  refused  to  take 
it.  "  Auntie  is  sick,"  he  said,  "  and  cannot 
come,  let  me  help  you."  "  No,  I  won't.  I 
want  my  auntie,"  she  snapped  out.  And  no 
amount  of  coaxing  could  induce  her  to  relent 
and  take  the  drink  from  his  hand.  The  strug- 
gle continued  long,  and  was  finally  compro- 

78 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

mised  by  her  taking  the  drink  from  an  older 
cousin,  who  had  been  called  out  of  bed  to  serve 
her. 

This  child  was  not  thirsty,  in  the  physio- 
logic sense,  and  did  not  need  a  drink ;  had  she 
really  needed  one  she  would  probably  have 
taken  it  when  offered.  She  wakened  and  was 
lonesome  and  liked  attention  and  service.  The 
drink  was  incidental.  Her  temper  was  aroused 
by  any  variation  from  the  attention  she  had 
expected.  And  here  was  a  mature  man  at 
her  bedside — in  his  nightgown — helplessly 
pleading  with  her,  five  years  old,  to  let  him 
serve  her ;  and  she,  vain  of  her  power,  and  in 
heartless  disregard  of  her  aunt's  sickness,  dog- 
gedly holding  him  to  her  ultimatum.  What 
a  picture !  Yet  this  case  is  not  at  all  uncom- 
mon ;  in  some  form  or  degree  it  is  represented 
in  the  observations  of  every  adult  person  who 
has  taken  even  casual  notice  of  the  so-called 
fortunate  children  of  our  time.  Is  it  any  won- 
der that  such  tendencies  in  children  lead  to  the 
nerve  wrecking  of  after  life  ? 

A  curiosity  of  this  subject  is  the  ease  with 
which  a  mother  forgets  the  affront  her  child 
puts  upon  her.  She  tells  him  to  stop  doing  a 
certain  forbidden  thing.  He  says  in  a  tone  of 
protest,  "  no,  I  want  to."  The  mother  says, 
"  I'll  punish  you  if  you  do,"  and  repeats  it  sev- 

79 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

eral  times  over.  He  stops,  waits  a  few  min- 
utes, watching  her  to  see  if  a  real  storm  is 
brewing  or  if  it  is  only  an  idle  threat ;  then, 
when  her  back  is  turned,  he  cautiously  re- 
sumes the  forbidden  mischief.  The  mother 
on  discovering  this  may  be  chagrined  and  un- 
happy, but  she  forgets  to  punish  him  as  she 
had  promised,  and  she  recovers  her  serenity 
and  joy  in  about  one  minute  after  the  child 
resumes  an  attitude  of  obedience  and  amity 
toward  her.  She  would  not  and  could  not  so 
easily  condone  an  offense  in  her  husband  or 
a  tradesman  or  a  neighbor.  It  is  not  that  she 
forgives  mischief  on  the  part  of  her  child — 
that  is  easy  and  natural  as  well  as  laudable 
— ^but  she  forgets  being  foiled  and  degraded. 
It  is  unfair  to  the  children  to  charge  all 
their  overconceit  and  bad  behavior  to  their 
own  morbid  emotionalism.  Their  parents 
often  unwittingly  help  them,  for  they  are 
proud  of  the  children's  achievements,  and  ac- 
centuate the  unwholesome  conceits  of  the  lat- 
ter. They  help  the  children  to  show  off,  and 
seem  to  be  proud  of  them  for  it.  A  child 
tends  to  strut  and  act  pompously,  as  though  he 
were  better  than  his  fellows  and  above  com- 
mon clay;  his  parents  enjoy  it  and  frequently 
encourage  it ;  it  shadows  distinction  for  their 
offspring,  and  so  seems  to  exalt  them.     This 

80 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

is  seldom  clone  in  a  family  of  many  children, 
but  often  in  a  family  of  one  child,  or  where  a 
child  is  far  removed  in  age  from  its  brothers 
and  sisters ;  otherwise  the  wings  of  his  conceit 
would  be  mercilessly  clipped  by  the  other  chil- 
dren. 

The  ideals  of  a  mother  are  often  fated  to 
cultivate  a  certain  degree  of  effeminacy  in  her 
son  by  keeping  his  hair  in  long  curls  far  into 
his  boyhood,  and  by  refusing  to  suffer  them 
to  be  trimmed,  even  when  the  child  in  his 
shame  begs  for  it.  If  the  boy  likes  to  be  thus 
unfavorably  conspicuous  among  his  fellows, 
it  is  proof  to  a  demonstration  that  he  has  be- 
gun to  take  on  the  girl  quality  of  mind,  or  that 
he  has  acquired  a  most  unwholesome  order  of 
conceit — from  neither  of  which  calamities  will 
he  ever  wholly  recover.  Occasionally  a  boy 
with  the  masculine  instinct  stalwart  within 
him  rebels  against  his  mother  who  would  thus 
sacrifice  his  future  on  the  altar  of  her  lesser 
womanishness.  There  is  small  wonder  that 
he  rebels  as  a  boy,  and  his  fight  is  admirable. 
It  is  pathetic  that  it  should  in  after  life,  as  it 
occasionally  does,  lessen  the  respect  he  has  for 
his  mother.  It  is  a  psychologic  curiosity,  and 
a  sad  one,  that  a  mother,  in  her  desire  to  keep 
her  son  a  baby,  should  insist  that  he  be,  as 
nearly  as  she  can  make  him,  a  girl  baby,  and 

8i 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

so  do  the  thing  that  in  her  soul  she  could 
never  wish  to  do,  namely,  to  humiliate  him 
with  his  fellows,  with  whom  he  must  train  and 
struggle  and  contend,  and  to  give  every  one 
of  his  fellows  an  advantage  over  him  in  his 
man's  career.  It  is  more  strange  than  the 
childless  woman's  devotion  to  a  pet  animal. 
The  strongest  manhood  and  the  greatest  ca- 
reer never  come  of  a  boy  taking  an  effeminate 
character  of  either  sex  for  his  hero ;  a  boy's 
only  safe  model  is  a  strong  man  of  his  own 
knowledge  and  observation,  or  one  out  of  the 
history  of  the  past.  The  hero  of  history  is 
good ;  but  the  live  hero  is  the  better  and  more 
inspiring. 

Some  of  the  autocratic  children  are  saved  by 
being  sent  away  from  home  to  school  with 
other  children.  There  the  yearning  for  atten- 
tion, the  tendency  to  overconceit  and  selfish- 
ness, are  taken  out  of  them  by  their  fellows, 
and  they  pass  into  a  more  normal  mental 
mood.  Many  times  these  children  are  sent 
away  by  reason  of  the  nervous  necessities  of 
their  parents — the  parents  cannot  endure  them 
any  longer.  The  nervous  breakdown  of  a 
mother  is  often  induced  by  a  few  years  of  in- 
cessant slavery  to  the  wishes  and  unreal  neces- 
sities of  a  child  (as  often  a  single  child  as 
a  number  of  children),  but,  thanks  to  this  bal- 

82 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

ance  wheel  of  nature,  when  the  mother  goes 
to  the  wall  the  child  is  spared.  As  long  as  the 
child  is  at  home  its  autocratic  demands  wear 
upon  the  mother,  and  with  their  mutual  nerv- 
ousness both  grow  worse.  The  wise  separa- 
tion of  them  (from  a  calamity  to  the  mother, 
if  it  must  be)  leads  to  the  improvement  of 
both,  rarely  if  ever  to  their  complete  resto- 
ration. 

The  frequent  quarreling  among  children  in 
a  family  is  vastly  less  harmful  than  the  com- 
mon indulgence  of  an  only  child  or  a  pam- 
pered one.  For,  while  quarreling  is  bad,  it 
tends  to  counteract  some  child  emotions  that 
are  worse.  And  it  cannot  be  denied  that  it 
makes  for  strength  of  a  certain  sort,  if  it  does 
not  encourage  all  the  graces  of  human  in- 
tercourse. 

What  is  the  explanation  of  all  this  parental 
apathy?  Several  circumstances  doubtless 
contribute  to  it.  One  of  the  most  potent  is 
parental  love,  what  might  be  called  the  animal 
love,  the  intense  blind  attachment  of  a  mother 
animal  for  her  young,  and  the  reluctance  to 
believe  in  any  ungenuineness  on  the  part  of 
the  child.  The  absolute  singleness  and  hon- 
esty with  which  some  parents  deal  with  their 
children  blinds  them  to  the  doubleness  of  the 

83 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

latter.  They,  being  open  as  the  sunHght,  are 
unable  to  imagine  a  child  taking  advantage 
of  them.  Alas,  that  they  should  so  forget 
their  own  childhood !  Thev  can  understand 
the  occasional  naughtiness  of  a  child  and  the 
carelessness  in  behavior  and  untidiness  and 
lack  of  order  of  most  children ;  these  short- 
comings are  plain ;  they  show  on  the  surface 
and  worry  the  parents.  It  is  the  outward 
seeming  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  that  all  par- 
ents would  like  their  children  to  have,  and  so 
they  are  deaf  and  blind  to  those  less  obvious 
tendencies  that  may  harm  a  child's  future. 
No  career  of  man  or  woman  was  ever  seri- 
ously hurt  by  bad  table  manners  in  childhood, 
or  by  the  fiction  building  expressed  in  the 
white  lies  told  at  this  time  of  life ;  while  count- 
less thousands  of  child  promises  of  noble  ca- 
reers have  been  dashed  by  exaltation  of  the 
egoistic  emotions  in  the  earlier  years.  Worse 
than  this,  some  of  those  thousands  have  suf- 
fered through  life  with  weak  nervous  systems 
— to  be  the  constant  pity  and  the  frequent  de- 
spair of  their  friends  and  the  desperation  of 
their  physicians. 

Most  parents  like  to  hug  the  gentle  conceit 
that  their  children  are  imbued  with  constant 
love  for  them.  They  desire  above  all  other 
things  to  have  everything  pleasant  in  the  fam- 

84 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

ily ;  they  dread  severe  scenes  and  situations. 
They  would  rather  see  the  children  smile  than 
see  them  benefited.  In  their  minds  it  is  a 
misfortune  for  a  child  to  cry  or  be  sorry ;  but 
a  few  occasional  moments  of  regret,  of  grief 
and  crying,  may  add  to  the  child's  strength 
and  future  happiness  more  than  a  year  of 
smiles. 

Parents  usually  theorize  and  wrongly  theo- 
rize that  lack  of  order,  the  use  of  slang  and 
vulgarity  on  the  part  of  their  children — even 
the  smoking  of  cigarettes — are  likely  to  con- 
tinue through  life  to  their  infinite  harm.  But 
all  such  peccadillos  put  together  are  not  a 
tenth  part  as  harmful  to  a  child's  future  as  the 
cultivation  of  the  selfish  emotions  which  most 
parents  unwittingly  permit,  if  they  do  not 
foster. 

Some  parents  are  habitually  dishonest  in 
dealing  with  their  children,  and  seem  to  ex- 
pect that  the  children  will  be  honest  and  can- 
did with  them.  They  must  know  they  are  not 
candid  with  the  children,  and  they  ought  to 
know  that  this  course  would  naturally  breed 
similar  conduct  on  their  children's  part — if 
inheritance  did  not  make  it  inevitable.  And 
a  man  who  is  willing  to  be  dishonest  with  his 
child  is  not  entitled  to  much  sympathy  if  his 
child  returns  him  in  kind. 

85 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

It  seems  almost  impossible  for  most  well- 
meaning  parents  to  correct  their  children 
severely  unless  they  are  angry.  When  not 
angry,  they  indulge,  condone,  and  wink  at 
conduct  which  they  have  forbidden  and  prom- 
ised not  to  tolerate.  But  such  conduct  annoys 
them  constantly  and  humiliates  them  often, 
and  so  it  is  difficult  for  them  to  recognize  or 
think  much  about  the  tendencies  that  obtrude 
less — like  those  I  have  tried  to  picture.  The 
tendencies  here  sketched  show  themselves  less 
obviously,  in  most  cases,  and  appear  less  to  de- 
mand immediate  attention ;  so  they  are  wholly 
neglected,  or  their  correction  is  postponed  and 
dreaded.  When  the  tendencies  are  finally  dis- 
covered and  their  importance  appreciated,  it 
is  usually  seen  that  their  correction  will  re- 
quire for  a  long  time  almost  constant  attention 
on  the  part  of  parents,  nurses,  or  teachers ; 
that  daily  struggles  with  the  child  will  be  nec- 
essary for  a  long  time,  and  a  degree  of  candor 
and  frankness  that  is  most  unusual  between 
parents  and  children,  if  not  between  caretak- 
ers and  children.  It  is  small  wonder  that  the 
vast  majority  shrink  from  such  a  missionary 
effort. 

Most  parents  are  cowardly  with  their  chil- 
dren in  some  things ;  they  shrink  from  telling 
them  certain  wholesome  facts  in  their  phvsi- 

86 


OF   THE    AVERAGE    PARENT 

cal  lives.  It  is  just  about  as  hard  to  tell 
them  certain  things  in  their  mental  and  moral 
lives,  and  parents  who  really  see  the  necessity 
for  the  latter  often  hesitate  and  put  off  the 
doing  of  it  till  they  come  to  pretend  to  them- 
selves that  it  is  not  necessary.  The  children 
do  not  know  of  these  tendencies  in  themselves, 
and  they  must  be  insistently  told  of  them  if 
they  are  to  know.  Primarily,  they  are  as  ig- 
norant of  them  as  they  are  of  their  developing 
physical  lives,  and  the  annunciation  does  not 
come  to  them  by  their  later  experiences  or 
from  other  children,  or  from  undesirable 
acquaintances  as  is  so  commonly  the  case 
with  the, knowledge  of  physical  development. 
When  they  do  learn  of  the  emotional  in- 
jury done  to  them  in  childhood  it  is  usually 
in  the  reflective  years  of  maturity,  and  long 
after  the  mischief  to  their  nerves  is  beyond 
repair. 

The  greatest  obstacle  of  all  to  any  better- 
ment of  the  conditions  here  set  forth  is  the 
inability  of  parents  to  understand  the  psychol- 
ogy of  their  children ;  which  is  very  much  like 
saying  that  the  chief  reason  why  the  average 
parent  cannot  see  is  that  he  is  blind.  The  par- 
ent, like  people  in  general,  rarely  sees  as  a 
motive  for  an  act  or  a  line  of  conduct  in  an- 
other, an  emotion  which  he  cannot  easilv  im- 

87 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

agine  himself  as  possessing  for  the  moment, 
or  under  like  conditions.  He  cannot  picture 
himself  as  moved  by  egoistic  exaltation  in  the 
circumstances  in  which  his  child  is  placed.  He 
cannot  remember  that  he  himself  perhaps 
thirty  years  before  was  moved  by  such  emo- 
tions in  his  daily  doings.  He  was  so  moved 
then,  as  his  child  is  now,  but  he  did  not  know 
it  then  or  afterward,  and  his  child  is  ignorant 
of  it  now.  What  is  more,  he  does  not  as  a 
man  know  definitely  when  or  how  he  shows 
the  same  sort  of  emotion  at  the  present  time ; 
somebody  else  may  tell  him — drive  it  into  his 
head,  if  such  a  thing  is  possible,  but  he  sub- 
stantially never  discovers  it  himself. 

A  hysterical  woman  disfigured  beyond  ex- 
pression by  such  emotions  never  knows  at  the 
time  the  nature  of  her  affliction.  If  she  some- 
time discovers  it,  by  a  degree  of  introspection 
that  is  both  rare  and  noble,  she  usually  sets 
herself  about  correcting  it.  It  is  the  observ- 
ing and  discriminating  friend  who  most  surely 
discovers  this  overpowering  twist  in  the  men- 
tal and  moral  nature  of  children.  Adults  oc- 
casionally see  it  in  the  children  when  it  is 
pointed  out  to  them,  and  then  they  readily 
look  back  on  their  own  childhood  and  confess 
to  themselves  that  they  were  dominated  by 
such  emotions  then.    This,  then,  is  an  affliction 

88 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

that  the  individual,  whether  child  or  man, 
rarely  discovers  himself,  but  must  be  helped 
out  of,  if  help  ever  comes.  The  helper  nat- 
urally at  hand  for  the  child  is  his  parent,  yet 
there  is  hardly  a  person  in  the  world  so  little 
likely  to  help  him  in  this  particular  as  his 
father  or  mother. 

This  affliction  is  like  sin,  into  which  people 
fall  easily,  unconsciously  and  insidiously ;  the 
sinner  needs  to  be  brought  to  a  sense  of  his 
condition  by  another.  Usually  it  is  a  shock 
to  him  to  discover  his  iniquity ;  so  it  is  here, 
the  blighted  one  is  covered  with  shame. 
Would  a  parent  cover  his  own  child  with 
shame  ?  Yes,  and  he  often  does  for  some  tem- 
porary and  perhaps  trifling  breach  of  deport- 
ment ;  but  rarely  for  an  emotion  that  stealthily 
guides  his  conduct  wrong,  least  of  all  for  one 
that  is  so  hidden  that  not  one  parent  in  a  hun- 
dred ever  sees  it — that  most  parents  refuse 
to  see. 

Some  of  the  most  glaring  exhibitions  by 
children  of  the  emotions  referred  to — the  strut, 
the  showing  off,  the  pomposity,  the  smartness, 
the  impudence,  even,  are  often  regarded  by 
their  elders  as  cunning,  as  evidence  of  precoc- 
ity and  the  promise  of  a  coming  great  man. 
Hence  the  parent,  as  well  as  the  child,  is  proud 
of  the  conduct.     Is  it  likely  that  a  father  will 

89 


THE    BLIND    SIDE 

chide  his  son  for  a  thing  he  himself  admires? 
Is  he  Hkely  to  deliberately  blast  a  budding 
possible  great  inventor,  or  business  magnate, 
or  college  professor,  or  president  of  the 
United  States  ? 

Yet,  it  is  cruel  to  say  that  a  child  may  not 
be  saved  from  the  harm  of  egoistic  emotions 
run  wild.  In  order  to  be  saved,  if  he  is  to  be 
saved  truly,  he  must  be  made  to  know  his  ten- 
dency early.  The  only  way  he  can  know  it 
is  for  some  one  to  tell  him  positively,  kindly, 
and  confidentially,  and  by  acts  as  well  as 
words,  and  by  insistence  long  continued  if 
need  be.  This  is  a  very  difficult  task,  and  it 
takes  courage.  It  is  a  rare  woman  who 
will  say  to  her  child,  and  say  it  firmly  and 
without  anger :  "  This  thing  you  are  doing  is 
the  result  of  your  foolish  conceit ;  you  do  it 
to  show  yourself  off,  to  get  attention  to  your- 
self, and  for  no  other  reason.  You  are  per- 
haps unconscious  of  this  fact,  but  you  must  try 
to  understand  it.  You  must  stop  thinking  so 
much  of  yourself ;  and,  to  help  you,  I  will 
cease  helping  you  and  let  you  help  yourself. 
You  must  serve  others  more  and  you  shall  be 
served  less."  The  average  woman  would  find 
the  telling  of  this  to  be  a  large  tax  on  her 
courage ;  and  to  do  it  repeatedly  and  not  to 
relax  her  rule  as  to  the  indulgence  of  the  child 

90 


OF   THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

would   take   more   strength   of   purpose  than 
most  parents  have. 

Through  the  babyhood  of  her  child  the 
average  mother  has  constantly  petted  and 
amused  it,  and  has  been  herself  comforted  by 
this  service.  To  her  the  child's  crying  was  a 
thing  to  be  stopped  by  any  gratification  what- 
ever ;  she  responded  instantly  with  sympathetic 
attention  to  its  grief  and  petulance ;  she  nightly 
walked  the  floor  with  it  in  her  arms  to  put  it 
to  sleep;  and  she  provided,  as  by  instinct, 
everything  possible  for  its  entertainment.  This 
habit,  therefore,  became  fixed  and  firm,  and 
she  had  as  much  joy  in  it  as  her  child  had,  and 
possibly  more.  To  expect  that  now,  out  of 
her  wisdom  and  philosophy,  she  will  com- 
pletely change  her  ways,  make  her  child  go  to 
sleep  alone  in  a  darkened  room  (crying  if  it 
will)  ;  that  she  will  stop  buying  expensive  toys, 
and  compel  the  child  to  amuse  itself  or  go 
unamused ;  and  that  she  will  refuse  absolutely 
to  respond  to  its  autocratic  demands,  is  to  ex- 
pect what  is  next  to  impossible.  To  hope  that 
she  will  forego  the  surpassing  mother- joy  of 
amusing  her  child,  and  try  to  find  comfort  in 
seeing  it  amuse  itself,  and  in  the  better  hope 
and  prospect  for  its  future  as  a  man  or 
woman — to  expect  all  this,  is  to  look  for  a  de- 
gree of  sense  and  courage  and  wholly  unselfish 

91 


THE   AVERAGE    PARENT 

love  that  is  wonderful,  heroic,  and  extremely 
rare. 

That  so  few  people  have  this  courage  and 
see  the  need  of  using  it  in  these  ways,  permits 
our  homes  and  our  infirmaries  to  be  filled  with 
adult  nervous  wrecks.  And  there  seems  to  be 
proof  enough  that  the  number  of  victims  of 
such  invalidism  is  not  growing  less,  but  is 
actually  increasing  in  this  country  to-day. 


92 


Some   Commencement  Ideals 


Some   Commencement  Ideals 


A  Baccalaureate  Address 

To  receive  a  diploma  that  stands  for  four 
years  of  work  and  study  is  an  epoch  in  the  hfe 
of  any  man — it  is  a  milestone  in  his  journey. 
A  man's  career  is  marked  off  by  several  mile- 
stones of  differing  significance.  Next  after 
infancy  comes  that  one  that  is  shown  by  the 
beginning  of  memory ;  then  later  that  of  se- 
lecting his  school  or  college  and  mapping  out 
his  plan  for  youth — for  his  man's  career  is 
rarely  outlined  with  any  certainty  till  after  his 
graduation  from  school.  Much  more  impor- 
tant to  his  future,  to  his  sentimental  after-life, 
is  the  milestone  of  his  graduation  from  col- 
lege, if  he  is  fortunate  enough  to  be  so  gradu- 
ated. Around  that  event  cluster  the  most 
precious  memories,  and  through  it  and  be- 
cause of  it,  often  come  many  of  the  best 
and  most  helpful  associations.     Alas  for  those 

95 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

who  have  been  deprived  of  such  memories 
and  associations ;  who,  whatever  their  achieve- 
ments, are  doomed  to  the  pathetic,  hfe-long 
regret  (or  delusion)  that  they  are  "  unedu- 
cated." 

The  diploma  of  a  professional  school  (espe- 
cially if  from  a  university)  is  in  some  respects 
the  most  important  milestone  of  all,  for  it 
opens  the  door  to  a  practical  career  in  a  life 
work;  it  is  the  threshold  to  the  great  world's 
tussle,  to  its  toil  and  sweat  probably,  and  may- 
be to  its  rewards — rewards  that  are  always 
sweetest  if  they  come,  and  come  only,  with 
the  toil. 

Now  that  you  have  your  diplomas,  having 
earned  them  in  honor,  one  of  the  first  and  most 
natural  questions  is,  what  you  are  going  to  do 
with  them. 

Probably  no  two  of  you  have  the  same  no- 
tion of  the  worth  of  the  diploma  or  its  mean- 
ing; and  you  will  doubtless  dispose  of  this 
more  or  less  precious  document  in  differing 
ways.  One  may  frame  it  in  heavy  ornate 
molding,  and  hang  it  in  his  office  in  a  good 
light,  and  contemplate  its  beauties ;  he  may 
expand  with  pride  as  he  looks  upon  it  and 
as  he  sees  others  admire  it.  Another  be- 
lieving that  it  is  somehow  needful  to  expose 
the  diploma  to  public  view,  will  frame  it  mod- 

96 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

estly  and  hang  it  in  some  shadow,  perhaps 
behind  the  door,  where  the  inquisitive  or  those 
who  doubt  his  professional  character  may  in- 
spect it.  Still  another  will  put  the  roll  away 
in  a  drawer  or  on  an  upper  shelf,  to  be  shown 
only  to  the  officers  of  the  law  when  necessary 
for  registration  or  proof. 

The  diploma,  the  graduation,  are  a  high  wall 
that  men  scale  with  some  difficulty,  to  enter  a 
larger  field  which  has  some  rewards  for  them 
if  they  work,  with,  unavoidably,  some  penal- 
ties and  many  tribulations.  This  first  achieve- 
ment is  to  some  men  so  remarkable  that  they 
linger  about  the  wall,  wonder  at  it  and  at 
themselves  for  having  scaled  it — and  have 
widening  joy  and  admiration  in  their  wonder. 
To  others  the  wall  is  forgotten  or  altogether 
ignored,  after  they  have  planted  their  heels 
solidly  into  its  farther  footstones,  and  plunged 
forward  into  the  new  work  ahead  of  them. 

As  differing  and  varied  are  the  estimates  of 
the  meaning  of  this  hour  by  those  who  are 
here  to  do  honor  to  your  decoration.  To 
some  who  are  sentimentally  near  to  you,  it 
is  an  hour  of  moist-eyed  gladness  for  your  re- 
ward, and  for  this  evidence  of  your  growth 
and  achievement ;  to  others  it  is  merely  a  cere- 
mony, a  display,  and,  to  all  of  them,  you,  the 
recipients  of  these  diplomas,  possess  various 

97 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

shades  of  physical  bearing,  beauty,  and  plain- 
ness, and  are  respectively  endowed  with  spe- 
cific virtues  or  vices  which  the  interested  ob- 
server has  no  doubt  in  the  world  he  can 
divine  from  the  shape  and  expression  of 
your  faces  and  the  carriage  of  your  bodies. 

Others  look  with  more  certain,  and  with 
solemn  if  unmournful  eyes,  through  the  doings 
and  sayings  of  this  occasion  to  the  life  and 
labor  that  are  to  come ;  and  they  mentally  spec- 
ulate as  to  the  way,  the  spirit,  and  the  outcome 
of  it  all. 

Of  this  latter  class  are  the  thoughtful  veter- 
ans who  have  traveled  some  of  the  way  them- 
selves. How  you  can  avoid  the  snags  over 
which  they  have  stumbled ;  what  new  obstacles 
are  likely  to  arise  in  this  later  day,  and  what 
new  word  of  courage  and  caution  you  need 
now ;  what  new  talisman  can  be  given  for  the 
future ;  these  are  questions  that  rush  in  upon 
the  older  men,  who  have  acquired  the  perspec- 
tive that  comes  only  with  the  marching  years 
of  the  journey. 

The  career  of  every  man  is  made  by  several 
elements :  among  these  are  his  opportunities, 
his  powers,  his  equipment  for  his  particular 
work,  his  continuity  of  purpose,  the  character 
of  his  personal  industry,  and  the  accidental 
occurrences  of  his  life.    It  is  determined  quite 

98 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

as  much  by  the  plans  and  conception  of  his 
work  and  of  himself  with  which  he  starts  out ; 
and  these  plans  and  notions  are  his  ideals. 
Probably  the  ideals  of  no  two  men  are  ever 
exactly  alike,  but  everyone  has  his  ideals  of 
some  sort  and  in  some  measure ;  they  are  back 
of  all  the  ambitions  and  aspirations  of  young 
life,  and  they  grow  fixed  with  age.  They  con- 
stitute a  large  part  of  the  motive  power  of 
most  men  who  achieve  anything  of  worth. 

That  a  man's  ideals  are  his  making  or  his 
destruction  is  a  very  old  truth,  but  it  refers 
mostly  to  the  cardinal  virtues.  The  standards 
of  honesty,  truthfulness,  uprightness,  and  per- 
sonal cleanness  are  the  highest  teaching  of 
all  time,  and  they  are  substantially  the  same 
throughout  the  ages.  They  are  the  indispen- 
sable ideals.  To  enlarge  on  them  now  would 
be  to  preach  a  sermon,  and  that  is  not  the 
present  purpose. 

I  would  rather  discuss  a  few  of  the  usually 
forgotten  or  unthought-of  ideals,  the  recon- 
dite standards  of  work  and  life  and  conduct. 
For  there  are  many  such  ideals,  and  they  gov- 
ern the  lives  and  order  the  careers  of  men  in 
unexpected  ways.  They  are  varied  in  force, 
in  character,  and  in  degree,  and  they  nearly 
always  possess  a  man  without  his  knowing  it ; 
often  without  his  friends'  knowing  it.     Every 

99 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

man  is  in  the  grasp  of  one  or  more  of  them 
most  of  the  time.  They  are  automatic  and 
never  stop ;  and  they  often  control  a  man  hke 
a  fetish.  They  are  hidden  leaks  that  lose  his 
power  and  initiative,  or  some  undiscovered 
supply  that  increases  them.  A  man  may  for- 
get for  an  hour  his  good  resolves  or  his  re- 
ligion, but  these  stealthy,  idealistic  guides  will 
stick  to  him  like  his  habit  of  breathing;  they 
work  with  the  certainty  of  the  subconscious 
mind;  they  never  sleep. 

These  ideals  create  habits  that  control  us 
inevitably ;  and  we  often  go  on  for  many 
years  or  through  life  completely  ignorant  both 
of  the  ideals  and  the  habits  they  have  created. 
They  have  fixed  themselves  upon  us  and  made 
or  marred  our  work,  and  we  are  blind  to 
everything  but  the  end  results — and  at  these 
last  we  wonder ;  and  usually  account  for  them 
in  the  wrong  way. 

What  are  ideals  for?  To  make  a  righteous 
life?  Yes;  but  to  make  a  successful  one  as 
well ;  to  increase  our  power  to  do  for  ourselves 
and  for  others;  to  increase  our  capacity  for 
the  larger  joys.  Within  the  realm  of  sanity 
one  does  not  have  ideals  whose  purpose  is  mis- 
ery for  himself,  damage  to  his  aims,  or  harm 
to  his  friends.  But  the  ideal  of  enmity  to  the 
wicked  and  to  the  enemy  still  exists  and  is  very 

lOO 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

old;  it  will  probably  never  wholly  die  out  of 
the  human  heart. 

The  greatest  success  in  life,  on  the  average, 
comes  to  those  with  symmetrical  powers  and 
character;  not  to  those  who  are  warped  and 
one-sided.  So  that  ideal  is  of  most  worth 
which  makes  a  man  stronger  in  his  weaker 
powers ;  that  is  most  worthless  that  increases 
his  unbalance  and  accentuates  his  warping. 
Wherefore,  there  are  fit  and  unfit  ideals. 

But  the  apparent  paradox  is  that,  apart 
from  the  greater  virtues,  the  ideals  a  man  usu- 
ally acquires,  those  which  dominate  him — 
what  we  may  call  his  secular  ideals — are  unfit ; 
that  is,  they  are  such  motives  as  increase  his 
asymmetry  rather  than  lessen  it. 

The  reason  for  this  is  not  strange ;  our 
ideals  in  this  sort  come  to  us  along  lines  of 
least  resistance ;  we  grow  into  those  we  have, 
rather  than  others,  because  it  is  easy  to  do  so. 
The  reverse  ought  to  be  the  case ;  we  need 
ideals  that  will  help  us  over  our  defects,  not 
to  increase  them.  We  are  as  far  wrong  many 
times  in  our  educational  methods.  A  boy  se- 
lects as  the  thing  to  study  that  which  he  learns 
easiest  and  knows  most  about;  and  he  neg- 
lects the  tasks  that  for  him  happen  to  be 
harder.  Such  a  course  tends  to  enlarge  the 
greater  talent  and  to  shrivel  the  lesser  one. 

lOI 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

This  large  talent  is  often  the  sole  substance 
of  genius ;  in  the  greatest  degree  it  amounts 
to  degeneracy,  and  the  world  is  not  in  such 
need  of  geniuses  as  to  make  an  approach  to 
degeneracy,  or  to  the  borderland  of  it,  profit- 
able. Society  could  better  do  without  the 
geniuses,  now  and  always — it  does  not  need 
them. 

The  sometime  gospel  of  pedagogy  holds 
that  the  child,  from  the  beginning,  may  select 
his  course  of  study — learn  what  he  likes  and 
omit  what  he  pleases.  Of  course  he  likes 
those  things  in  which  he  is  apt  and  strong,  and 
hates  those  hard  ones  in  which  he  is  weak ; 
and  so  he  grows  more  uneven.  Happily,  all 
educators  do  not  agree  to  this  tenet ;  some  be- 
lieve that  a  child's  course  of  study  should  tend 
to  make  a  symmetrical  man,  and  not  favor 
one-sidedness.    This  is  the  part  of  wisdom. 

Thus  of  a  man's  ideals.  They  ought  to  con- 
tribute to  his  power  and  increase  his  happiness. 
But  unfit  ideals — both  positive  and  negative — 
are  the  source  of  a  great  amount  of  grief  and 
failure.  That  man  who  knows  (from  his  ex- 
amination papers  or  otherwise)  that  his  use 
of  English  is  crude  and  blundering,  should 
have  the  perfection  of  the  language  for  one 
of  his  ideals ;  he  should  try  to  acquire  a  crit- 
ical sense  of  it.    But  this  is  the  very  thing  he 

102 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

is  least  likely  to  do,  because  his  consciousness 
of  his  fault  is  dull,  and  the  ideal  is  hard.  The 
lack  of  such  an  ideal  has  kept  many  a  man 
below  his  deserts,  and  sometimes  has  even 
blasted  a  career.  I  know  of  several  notable 
examples  of  this  kind.  One  was  a  man  of 
great  superiority  in  his  profession,  who  failed 
of  appointment  to  a  professorship  which  he 
had  coveted  for  years,  and  for  no  other  reason 
than  the  lack  of  such  an  ideal. 

If  a  man  could  know  that  in  his  demeanor 
he  is  liable  to  be  rude,  brusque,  and  impolite 
(as  his  neighbors  know  it)  he  might  erect  an 
ideal  of  gentleness  and  courtesy  with  great 
profit  to  his  spirit,  and,  if  he  practices  a  pro- 
fession, profit  to  his  purse  also.  Probably  he 
has  already  fully  developed  powers  in  other 
directions,  most  likely  in  force  and  eiifective- 
ness.  Can  he  discover  the  need  of  a  new  ideal 
and  create  it  ?  Probably  not ;  for  nothing  but 
a  new  birth  in  introspective  psychology  can 
enable  him  to  do  it.  And  if  he  thus  acquires 
an  ambition  for  a  new  ideal,  he  must  watch 
himself  for  long  before  he  can  create  a  new 
habit. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  man  who  is  naturally 
courteous  and  thoughtful  of  the  feelings  of 
others  in  little  things,  and  especially  in  their 
entertainment,  is  in  danger  of  overworking  a 

103 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

good  ideal.  For  it  can  be  carried  so  far — and 
often  is — as  to  entail  a  great  burden  in  the 
duties  which  it  seems  to  impose.  It  is  a  bur- 
den by  the  fear,  even  terror,  it  often  produces 
in  its  possessor  lest  it  has  been  or  may  be  vio- 
lated. And  when  it  is  in  excess  it  has  no  com- 
pensating advantages,  except  some  very  du- 
bious ones.  The  standard  requires  the  person 
to  be  polite  and  to  entertain  others  in  conver- 
sation ;  so  a  sick  man  wears  himself  out  enter- 
taining thus  a  lot  of  people  he  is  under  no  ob- 
ligations to.  A  distinguished  friend  of  mine, 
when  on  his  deathbed,  and  too  weak  to  talk  to 
anybody,  actually  felt  called  upon  to  apologize 
for  not  talking.  The  impression  grows  to  be 
a  sort  of  craze — not  only  to  talk,  but  to  believe 
it  to  be  a  duty  to  talk  whenever  within  earshot 
of  others.  Then  follows  a  species  of  deception 
and  finesse — for  we  get  tired  of  people,  even 
our  friends,  and  tired  of  talking  to  them ;  we 
shun  them,  keep  out  of  their  way,  avoid  them, 
give  a  lot  of  fictitious  excuses  for  not  com- 
ing, and  for  being  out  when  they  come  to  us. 
For  we  know  perfectly  that  once  in  their 
presence  nothing  but  syncope  or  death  can 
stop  the  wagging  of  our  tongues.  That  we 
have  enough  of  plain  personal  courage  to  stop 
it  is,  in  our  civilization,  unthinkable. 

Some  ideals  as  to  our  dress,  adornment,  and 

104 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

personal  demeanor  are  peculiar  if  not  un- 
canny, and  lead  to  many  bypaths  that  take  us 
into  unexpected  regions.  Sometimes  the  effect 
is  in  itself  grotesque,  and  very  often  it  is  po- 
tent in  its  influence  on  character  and  success 
in  life.  The  sum  total  of  these  results  is  usu- 
ally unfortunate  if  not  bad,  the  sole  advantage 
being  the  happiness  which  the  individual  him- 
self seems  to  get  out  of  his  indulgences.  It 
is  a  cheap  sort  of  happiness,  always  discolored 
by  a  degree  of  vanity ;  but  many  of  us  seem 
to  find  substantial  joy  in  such  things.  Once 
in  the  East  there  was  a  judge,  who,  for  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century,  appeared  daily  with  his  hair 
in  large  long  curls  about  his  neck.  It  was 
inevitable  that  this  should  influence  his  char- 
acter and  his  relations  with  other  people.  The 
curls  amounted  to  little  in  themselves,  but  they 
singled  him  out  from  among  the  rest  of  the 
community,  and  they  were  a  large  factor  in  his 
life  through  the  self-complacency  and  egoism 
which  they  ministered  to  in  the  man.  He 
could  no  more  avoid  thinking  about  his  curls 
and  their  effect  on  others  than  he  could  stop 
winking. 

If  it  were  the  custom  for  men  to  wear  rings 
in  their  noses,  it  would  mean  little  that  a  par- 
ticular person  did  it,  except  a  thraldom  to  a 
mere  fashion — a  thing  we  are  all  constantly 

105 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

victims  of  to  some  degree.  Fashion  allies  us 
to  a  race,  a  guild  or  a  set  of  people.  But  for 
one  man  in  a  hundred  thousand  to  wear  a  ring 
in  his  nose  takes  him  out  of  the  fashion  and 
into  the  realm  of  eccentricity  and  overconceit. 
There  is  virtue  in  the  defiance  of  that  kind 
of  a  fashion  whose  only  real  purpose  is  dis- 
play; but  the  judge  failed  of  this.  Such  a  re- 
volt would  have  required  a  fine  sort  of  courage 
and  independence.  If  that  kind  of  fortitude 
had  been  required  in  order  to  wear  the  curls, 
he  never  would  have  had  them.  It  needed  only 
a  species  of  vanity,  a  desire  to  do  something 
others  did  not  or  could  not  do,  something  that 
would  distinguish  this  man  from  all  his  fel- 
lows ;  or  an  abounding  desire  to  please  his  per- 
sonal fancy.  Nor  did  he  curl  his  hair  from 
an  idealistic  desire  merely  to  distinguish  him- 
self from  others.  That  could  have  been  done 
through  creditable  work,  art,  achievement, 
daring,  risk,  or  courage — which  countless 
thousands  of  men  and  women  are  laudably 
doing  every  day.  What  the  judge  did  took 
no  courage  worthy  of  the  name,  no  work — 
save  a  few  minutes  each  morning  with  his 
curling  facilities  and  the  help  of  some  mem- 
ber of  his  family — no  attainment  or  study  or 
skill.  He  paraded  his  curls  like  the  color  of 
his  skin,  or  the  shape  of  his  features,  or  the 

1 06 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

gait  of  his  walk,  and  without  a  particle  of 
credit  to  himself. 

Now,  the  curls  were  a  trifle,  like  an  inch- 
long  finger  nail,  or  a  beard  as  long  as  the 
body  of  the  wearer.  These  are  little  things  in 
themselves  and  amount  to  nothing  in  the 
world's  greater  arithmetic.  But  they  are 
meaningful  if  they  signify  a  mental  quality,  an 
emotion,  which  colors  the  life  and  segregates 
in  some  way  an  individual  from  his  fellows — 
and  they  always  mean  a  weaker  rather  than  a 
stronger  character.  They  are  more  vital  still 
if  they  beget,  as  they  tend  to,  an  emotional 
bent  that  lessens  the  power  of  the  individual  in 
the  work  at  his  hand.  Such  a  waste  of  per- 
sonal force  and  influence  is  a  sin  of  large  pro- 
portions. And  it  is  no  adequate  answer  to 
this  criticism  to  say  that  such  habits,  so  acting, 
are  happifying  to  the  individual,  for  joy  can 
come  as  truly  from  noble  emotions  as  from 
weak  ones,  and  no  man  has  a  right  to  pleasures 
that  dwarf  him. 

To  make  oneself  odd  by  defying  a  useless 
or  injurious  fashion,  when  it  takes  courage  to 
do  it,  is  commendable.  That  is  to  defy  the 
class  conscience  and  take  a  stand  for  the  sake 
of  personal  conscience.  The  fashion  in  trifles, 
like  neckties  and  ribbons,  is  sometimes  the 
refuge  for  souls  that  lack  courage.    To  refuse 

107 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

to  use  tobacco  or  liquor,  or  wear  high  collars 
or  tight  corsets  when  they  are  in  style,  some- 
times takes  the  manner  of  courage  that  pushes 
a  man  into  battle,  or  makes  him  face  an  epi- 
demic of  deadly  disease  and  refuse  to  run 
away  from  it.  No  case  can  be  made  out 
against  such  courage — it  cannot  even  be 
laughed  down.  It  is  the  attribute  of  the  real 
and  not  the  sham  hero. 

There  are  some  ideals  which  a  professional 
man  cannot  afford  to  do  without,  as  there  are 
those  which  he  ought  to  shun  with  all  his 
might. 

One  of  the  latter  which  is  very  common  to  us 
is  that  of  our  own  sense  of  certainty  and  suf- 
ficiency. We  fall  into  it  unavoidably.  We 
possess,  we  come  to  believe,  the  very  founda- 
tions of  all  wisdom^  and  we  are  strong  for  re- 
forming the  world,  if  not  making  it  over,  in 
the  first  decade  of  our  professional  lives.  So 
there  grows  up  within  us  a  great  amount  of 
dignity  and  personal  importance  that  are  sure 
to  be  jarred  by  sundry  experiences  of  life 
which  are  inevitable.  But  we  feel  bound  to 
protect  and  defend  them  nevertheless.  When 
a  man  seeks  our  professional  advice  and  then 
fails  to  follow  it,  we  sometimes  feel  affronted 
and  are  grieved  over  it,  and  so  waste  a  store  of 
good  energy  that  we  might  put  to  a  better  use. 

108 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

It  is  a  slow  lesson  for  us  to  learn,  that  peo- 
ple have  notions  of  their  own — foolish  ones 
often — which  they  have  been  following  more 
or  less  for  centuries,  and  that  they  have  some 
rights  to  follow  them  even  if  they  are  foolish ; 
also,  that  they  frequently  will  follow  them  in 
spite  of  any  and  all  of  our  efiforts  to  dissuade 
them.  And  we  cumulate  unhappiness  for  our- 
selves when  we  let  our  sense  of  professional 
dignity  and  personal  importance  run  hard 
against  them.  It  is  a  long  step  forward  when 
the  doctor,  young  or  old,  can  say  to  his  mis- 
behaving patient,  and  say  it  gently :  "  Of 
course  you  do  not  have  to  follow  my  advice. 
It  is  given  to  you  on  the  theory  of  doing  you 
good,  but  you  can  ignore  it  if  you  wish — only, 
remember,  that  if  you  do  neglect  it,  not  I  but 
you  take  the  responsibility.  I  am  willing, 
even  glad,  to  be  freed  from  responsibility  if 
you  wish  me  to  be."  This  sort  of  tactics  not 
only  shows  that  the  doctor  has  learned  to  con- 
trol himself;  but  it  also  is  the  most  potent  in- 
fluence to  clear  the  moral  atmosphere  between 
himself  and  his  client. 

Have  an  ideal  that  you  will  do  your  work 
honestly,  faithfully,  and  as  precisely  as  possi- 
ble, not  lazily  or  carelessly,  and  that  then  you 
will  take  the  consequences  without  whining. 
This  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  best  courage  ; 

109 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

it  was  the  ideal  of  the  greatest  soldier  of  re- 
cent times — and  it  saved  his  cause  and  him- 
self. Moreover,  after  you  have  planted  your 
seed  as  best  you  may,  not  perhaps  as  well  as 
another  might,  but  as  well  as  you  can,  then 
watch  for  its  sprouting,  but  don't  dig  up  the 
ground  to  see  if  it  is  beginning  to  sprout  or 
is  growing  downward. 

Shun  the  vicious  ideal  of  speculating  in  your 
mind  as  to  what  in  general  others  think  of  you. 
Don't  walk  down  the  street  mentally  asking 
people  whether  they  recognize  in  you  the  sort 
of  fellow  you  think  you  are.  They  will  never 
so  recognize  you  anyway ;  and  for  you  to  do 
this  distracts  the  mental  attention  and  pre- 
vents serious  work;  it  leads  to  worry,  fear, 
suspicion,  jealousy,  and  heartburnings.  It 
never  pays.  And  when  with  exalted  emotions 
you  begin  to  guess — for  many  will,  and  usu- 
ally guess  wrong — as  to  how  others  think  and 
feel  about  you,  then  you  are  walking  along  the 
rim  of  the  grand  canyon  of  gentle  lunacy. 
You  may  never  do  it — pray  God  that  you 
never  will — but  you  can  then  very  easily 
plunge  over  into  the  abyss. 

I  once  had  a  friend,  eminent  in  his  profes- 
sion, who,  when  called  in  an  emergency  to  see 
a  patient  of  another  physician,  always  pre- 
scribed with  ingenuous  loyalty  both  to  the  pa- 

IIO 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

tient  and  his  doctor.  But  he  was  sure  to  go 
round  the  next  day  and  make  an  unexpected 
call  on  the  patient.  When  asked  why  he  did 
it,  he  said,  after  some  hesitation :  "  I  do  it  to 
see  how  I  stand  with  the  family."  He  was  a 
good  man  in  most  things,  but  he  was  wrong 
in  this,  and  this  foolish  ideal  tinged  with  dis- 
credit his  whole  career.  He  had  no  call  to 
constitute  himself  a  detective  to  find  out 
whether  the  people  thought  well  or  ill  of  him ; 
and  it  was  little  advantage  if  he  did  know,  for 
if  it  was  well  his  vanity  grew,  which  was 
needless ;  and  if  it  was  ill  he  increased  his 
bitterness,  which  was  harmful  as  well  as  un- 
necessary. His  duty  ended  when  he  had 
served  the  patient  honestly  and  scientifically, 
and  he  ought  to  have  had  the  courage  to  rest 
his  case  there.  His  duty  was,  like  the  duty 
of  all  men,  to  know  himself  that  his  conduct 
was  intentionally  correct  and  tallied  with  the 
golden  rule.  Then  he  needed  manliness 
enough  to  walk  erect  and  let  others  think  what 
they  might. 

One  of  the  best  ideals  of  all  is  that  we  will 
not  and  cannot  afford  to  be  petty  and  trifling. 
This  is  a  hard  one  to  hold  to,  so  naturally  do 
we  fill  our  minds  with  the  trivialities  of  life. 
We  talk  about  trifles,  hear  about  them  by  the 
hour,  and  read  them  in  the  columns  of  gossip 

III 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

about  folks,  in  the  daily  papers.  If  you  care 
for  a  curious  study  in  the  anatomy  of  your 
own  daily  life,  just  make  a  list  every  night  for 
a  week,  of  all  the  trifles  that  have  concerned 
your  mind  during  the  respective  days — and 
lay  the  record  aside  for  a  year.  Then  read 
it  over  carefully  and  say  whether  you  think 
it  was  a  profitable  week. 

One  of  the  hardest  things  of  all  to  do — and 
one  of  the  most  important  to  be  done — is  to 
make  sure  that  we  do  not  regard  to-day  that- 
thing  to  be  momentous  which  to-morrow  we 
shall  know  was  a  trifle.  The  struggle  after 
real  consistency  is  a  hard  one ;  and  a  fine  sense 
of  proportion  is  a  rare  gift. 

One  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  a 
young  doctor  is  to  be  able  to  be  dismissed  by 
a  patient  and  be  serene  about  it.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion of  point  of  view  and  the  relation  he  thinks 
he  holds  to  his  patients.  If  he  has  the  only 
right  view,  namely,  that  he  is  a  servant  of  the 
public,  and  that  his  relations  with  his  patients 
must  be  of  absolute  mutualness,  and  that  he 
most  of  all  desires  that  the  relations  shall 
cease  the  moment  the  mutualness  is  broken ; 
if  he  can  measure  up  to  this  platform  he  has 
smooth  sailing;  otherwise,  he  is  sure  to  en- 
counter repeated  seas  of  water  both  hot  and 
cold,  that  will  rob  him  of  many  of  the  joys  of 

112 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

life  that  he  is  entitled  to  and  very  much 
needs. 

Numerous  professional  men  go  through  life 
with  such  false  notions  about  their  fees  as 
to  create  for  themselves  a  lot  of  trouble. 
Their  difficulties  are  chiefly  of  two  kinds. 
One  is  an  unreasoning  idea,  and  wholly 
groundless,  that  all  clients  must  be  averse  to 
paying  for  professional  services,  and  resent 
being  asked  to  pay.  One  who  has  this  idea 
is  likely  to  feel  that  sending  a  bill,  and  particu- 
larly the  dunning  of  a  debtor,  has  some  of  the 
qualities  of  a  challenge  to  combat ;  and  at  best 
he  finds  it  a  very  unpleasant  task.  This  is  all 
wrong ;  the  average  client  expects  to  pay  a  fair 
fee  for  faithful  services ;  and  to  take  the  con- 
trary view  discredits  both  the  doctor  and  the 
public.  Of  course  there  are  a  few  men  and 
women  who  have  no  appreciation  of  their  just 
obligations  to  anybody  or  anything,  and  al- 
ways try  to  shirk  them — but  they  are  the  ex- 
ception, and  we  ought  to  be  willing  to  teach 
them  some  lessons  by  wholesome  insistence, 
and  to  do  it  without  anger  and  without  look- 
ing or  acting  as  if  we  had  been  stealing. 

The  opposite  ideal  with  which  a  few  start 
out  is  that  of  coveting  the  enormous  fees  that 
a  few  men  have  received.  This  attitude  is  un- 
fair to  the  public,  who  should  only  in  the  rarest 

113 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

instances  be  expected  to  pay  such  sums — and 
can  only  in  a  few  cases  afford  to  pay  them — 
and  it  does  the  doctor  discredit,  begets  a  spirit 
of  sordidness,  and  works  against  the  best  serv- 
ice of  the  profession  to  the  pubhc,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  sacred  of  all  duties. 

Let  us  first  be  scientific  and  faithful  to  our 
patients ;  let  us  acquire  friends  and  a  large 
clientele  if  we  can;  then  let  us  raise  our  fees 
to  keep  down  a  flood  of  work  that  happens  to 
flow  our  way.  When,  if  it  ever  comes,  some- 
thing leads  the  public  and  the  profession  to 
make  a  large  enough  market  for  such  talents 
as  we  have,  then  let  our  fee-bills  to  those  able 
to  pay  recognize  the  fact ;  but  let  us  never, 
as  we  hope  for  future  happiness,  be  grasping 
with  the  poor  people,  who  give  the  world  its 
best  lessons  in  frugality  and  honesty ;  and  let 
us,  as  we  hate  meanness,  never  forget  our  own 
beginning  days  of  small  things. 

Let  us  be  honest  to  science  and  to  ourselves. 
If  we  have  to  shade  the  fact  to  the  patient  for 
his  good,  and  even  to  give  him  placebos  to  the 
same  end,  we  must  never  deceive  either  sci- 
ence or  ourselves.  There  is  only  one  right 
way  to  study  and  practice  medicine,  and  that  is 
in  a  spirit  of  humility  to  the  truth,  and  espe- 
cially to  a  new  truth — but  a  truth  proven.  For 
the  new  truths  come  and  will  continue  to  come, 

114 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

and  with  a  conservative  skepticism  we  must 
keep  our  minds  open  to  receive  them. 

Probably  the  most  effective  mental  quality 
that  most  young  practitioners  lack — that  few 
men  have  at  the  beginning — is  a  sufficient 
gift  of  imperturbability.  No  other  quality  so 
makes  a  man,  especially  a  doctor,  superior  to 
accidents,  emergencies,  and  trouble  as  this 
one ;  as  no  other  is  so  profitable  in  making 
him  a  power  in  the  profession  and  in  the 
world. 

If  a  patient  dies  on  the  operating  table,  or 
goes  out  in  a  minute  from  pulmonary  hem- 
orrhage, or  if  you  discover  you  have  blun- 
dered, you  must  not  shake ;  and  you  must  not 
throw  up  your  hands  while  life  lasts.  How- 
ever appalling  the  emergency  may  be,  you  must 
not  be  discouraged,  and  you  must  make  your 
best  fight  when  the  tide  sets  against  you.  In 
athletic  games  that  man  is  worth  little  who  can 
only  play  his  best  when  victory  and  the  shouts 
of  his  friends  are  in  the  air.  So  in  this  pro- 
fessional life,  and  in  all  life's  struggles,  that 
man  who  is  strong  only  when  no  calamity 
threatens  counts  for  little ;  he  is  nearly  worth- 
less, and  may  be  worse  than  that.  In  this  ci- 
vilian career  the  best  qualities  of  a  good  sol- 
dier are  needed,  namely,  dependableness  in 
trouble. 

115 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT    IDEALS 

Finally,  there  are  a  few  ideals  that  are  so 
vital  for  an  all-round  success  that  they  have 
the  quality  of  sacredness.  One  is  that  this 
business  of  life  is  too  important  for  us  to  waste 
time  and  energy  in  personal  contentions.  If 
we  contend  it  must  be  for  some  principle  or 
for  a  benefit  to  the  public  whose  servants  we 
are.  There  is  one  sovereign  remedy  for  all 
personal  quarrels  that  anybody  may  try  to  get 
you  into — that  is  to  ignore  them  and  go  on 
with  your  work.  If  you  will  only  have  pleas- 
ure in  this  and  let  it  fill  your  days,  you  will 
have  no  time  to  contend,  and  your  neighbors 
will  soon  discover  this  and  be  made  better 
by  it. 

Another  ideal,  and  the  most  sacred  of  them 
all,  is  one  of  wholesome  discontent — a  discon- 
tent that  must  only  end  with  your  latest  breath 
of  mentally  competent  life.  You  must  be  dis- 
satisfied with  the  many  unsolved  questions  in 
science,  problems  of  the  greatest  interest,  prob- 
lems that  concern  the  lives  of  the  people.  It 
is  an  unending  work  of  love  and  interest  to 
solve  them  ;  and  the  long  night  of  our  past  ig- 
norance about  them  must  not  discourage  you. 
So  much  new  science  has  come  by  the  labors 
of  our  profession  within  the  memory  of  men 
still  young,  that  nobody  should  be  discouraged 
as  to  the  future.     Every  man  must  have  an 

ii6 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

interest  in  discovery.  If  you  may  not  become 
an  investigator  you  can  help  hold  up  the 
arms  of  another  who  is,  and  so  have  some  part 
in  the  cumulative  glory.  Stirred  by  this  dis- 
content your  eyes  must  look  steadily  forward 
for  new  light — ^beware  of  the  false  light — for 
the  true  one  will  appear  and  you  shall  not  be 
surprised,  because  you  have  been  looking  for 
it  all  the  years. 

So  shall  you  grow  and  learn  to  your  latest 
day,  and  you  shall  escape  the  calamity  of 
mental  fossilization.  This  deplorable  fate  of 
so  many  men  comes  of  a  fixed  notion  that 
most  of  the  knowable  is  known,  and  that  sci- 
ence will  remain  as  it  was.  But  whoso  pos- 
tulates that  many  things  are  yet  to  be  discov- 
ered, and  that  some  of  his  most  precious 
theories  may  one  day  have  to  be  given  up  or 
recast,  and  that  it  is  a  disgrace  to  stand  still — 
that  man  will  keep  his  heart  warm  and  his  in- 
terest close  to  the  moving  column.  He  can 
never  become  a  mental  fossil ;  and  though  liv- 
ing into  age,  he  shall  die  young. 

The  medical  profession  must  progress  and 
grow  in  knowledge,  and  the  new  knowledge 
must  make  for  higher  usefulness.  But  we  are 
in  danger — and  the  more  volatile  of  us  are  in 
most  danger — from  this  very  need.  We  are 
liable,  if  not  likely,  to  be  sidetracked  in  a  pur- 

117 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

suit  of  one  idea,  and  to  be  governed  by  it, 
and  so  lose  our  sense  of  proportion  ;  to  become 
seized  with  a  fad  and  try  to  square  the  world 
to  it.  The  rapid  progress  of  our  science  and 
art  during  the  past  few  years  has  increased 
this  danger,  and  we  have  had  plentiful  exam- 
ples of  men  being  dominated  by  a  single 
thought,  and  losing  all  judicial  judgment. 
Some  of  the  more  enthusiastic  of  thera  have 
had  a  new  fad  each  decade  for  forty  years. 
Hardly  one  of  them  has  attained  to  great  suc- 
cess in  any  way,  unless  the  occasional  riding 
into  pecuniary  fortune,  possibly  in  the  saddle 
of  their  fads,  may  be  called  success. 

No  professional  man  has  great  success 
merely  because  he  makes  money — true  suc- 
cess requires  also  usefulness  to  his  public,  loy- 
alty to  the  truth,  the  approval  of  the  great 
body  of  his  associates,  and  a  clear  conscience 
of  his  own.  Thorough  sanity  and  moderation 
in  all  our  judgments  is,  therefore,  the  only 
safe  ideal.  There  is  more  need  now  than  ever 
before  for  this  standard  in  the  medical  pro- 
fession. To  "  prove  all  things  and  hold  fast 
to  that  which  is  true  "  has  not  ceased  to  be 
wisdom.  We  can  be  progressive  and  at  the 
same  time  be  sensible. 

We  can  be  moderate  and  judicial,  refuse  to 
be  stampeded  either  for  or  against  a  new  doc- 

ii8 


SOME    COMMENCEMENT   IDEALS 

trine,  and  yet  put  every  new  truth  to  its  best 
use.  We  have  no  warrant,  simply  because  we 
have  discovered  a  new  fact,  to  throw  our  hats 
into  the  air  and  forget  that  this  fact  has  a 
vital  nexus  with  a  hundred  old  truths  that  can- 
not be  abandoned,  and  we  will  show  our  wis- 
dom by  searching  for  that  relation.  If  salva- 
tion ever  comes  to  us  it  must  be  through  all  the 
truth,  not  a  mere  fragment  of  it.  And  a  due 
sense  of  proportion — otherwise  common  sense 
— as  an  unswerving  and  insistent  ideal  is,  in  a 
workaday  life,  the  best  guide  for  a  safe 
journey. 


119 


A  Domestic  Clearing  House 


A   Domestic  Clearing  House 


There  is  a  good  side  to  the  habit  of  mind — 
one  of  the  most  common  of  all  habits — which 
holds  those  things  to  be  best  that  have  had 
the  sanction  of  centuries  of  usage.  We  do  not 
lightly  change  our  ways  of  life  in  the  more 
vital  things,  although  we  do  change,  and 
sometimes  change  annually  in  the  unvital 
things,  and  perhaps  we  progress.  The  human 
mind  is  not  averse  to  looking  at  things  in  new 
ways,  as  we  know  by  abundant  examples  in 
the  past.  But  we  are  in  danger  of  trying  to 
make  progress  in  defiance  of  the  laws  of  na- 
ture; and,  when  we  do  that,  we  knock  our 
heads  against  various  obstacles.  We  some- 
times try  to  walk  on  the  air  or  on  the  water, 
and  deny  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  matter ; 
but  then  we  encounter  practical  difficulties 
that  are  troublesome. 

All  our  real  progress  has  been  made  along 

123 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

the  lines  of  demonstrated  facts.  Every  effort 
which  has  discredited  that  standard  has,  sooner 
or  later,  come  to  grief.  The  history  of  the 
human  race  is  littered  with  the  wreckage  of 
theories  and  cults  that  have  gone  to  ruin 
through  forgetfulness  of  this  truth. 

When  men  emerged  from  barbarism  and 
built  houses,  they  thought  themselves  fortu- 
nate to  be  thus  able  to  protect  their  bodies 
from  storm  and  cold  and  heat.  But  it  is  a 
discovery  of  this  later  day  that  to  vast  num- 
bers of  people  house  life  is  often  a  grievous 
misfortune.  Countless  thousands  get  sick  be- 
cause they  stay  in  houses  too  much ;  and  the 
sick  in  large  numbers  recover  by  practically 
living  out  of  doors. 

Who  by  any  old-fashioned  reasoning  about 
things  would  ever  have  thought  of  killing 
mosquitoes  to  avoid  ague  and  yellow  fever? 
Or  of  looking  through  a  human  body  from  a 
dark  box  to  see  a  nail  in  the  stomach,  or  a 
bullet  in  the  muscles?  That  such  things  are 
both  possible  and  true  gives  us  warrant  to 
seek  still  other  improvements  in  the  conveni- 
ences of  our  lives,  and  other  advantages  over 
the  adverse  influences  of  nature  in  general  and 
the  enemies  of  the  human  race  in  particular. 

The  search  for  happiness  is  as  old  as  man 
and  as  constant  as  the  sun ;  albeit  the  quest  is 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

often  poorly  planned  for  success.  To  add  to 
our  comforts  and  to  minimize  our  cares  is  the 
ambition  of  everybody.  Efforts  to  enlarge  our 
joys  without  harm  are  always  commendable. 
And  that  a  change  in  the  ways  of  living  ap- 
pears to  violate  custom  and  fixed  notions  is 
nothing  against  it,  provided  it  offers  a  better 
average  of  happiness.  All  reforms  have  met 
with  more  or  less  opposition  on  the  part  of  the 
people,  except  the  reduction  of  the  rate  of  post- 
age. But  reforms  should  not  be  attempted 
carelessly.  There  are  certain  conditions  that 
ought  to  be  insisted  upon  as  crucial  for  each 
one  that  is  proposed.  It  must  promise  to  lessen 
or  abolish  some  evil,  some  cause  of  human 
grief ;  or  it  must  add  to  some  comfort  already 
possessed;  or  it  must  create  a  new  pleasure 
that  is  not  unwholesome;  and  withal,  it  must 
not  do  any  countervailing  injury. 

No  innovation  can  be  more  laudable  than 
one  that  shall  give  to  our  handicapped  children 
a  better  start  in  life  and  more  chances  for  a 
successful  career.  A  love  of  childhood  be- 
longs to  most  normal  minds.  Some  people  are 
interested  solely  in  their  own  children;  some 
are  anxious  to  possess  children  of  their  own; 
they  love  them  because  they  are  their  own — 
and  work  and  fight  for  them  for  this  reason. 
Others  like  children  in  general  by  a  common 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

fondness  that  is  inexplicable,  hence  instinctive. 
Others  still  are  fond  of  them  as  the  men  and 
women  of  to-morrow — the  potentiality  of  full- 
fledged  citizens  of  the  future.  There  are 
others  who  have  no  interest  whatever  in  chil- 
dren or  childhood  ;  and  a  few  of  these  are  fond 
of  the  lower  animals. 

People  who  have  no  liking  for  children, 
or  who  dislike  them,  are  usually  more  selfish 
than  other  people ;  and  the  devotion  of  par- 
ents to  their  children  is  often  tainted  with  a 
selfish  calculation  that  the  children  will  re- 
turn to  them  the  love  and  care  later  on. 
The  failure  of  the  children  to  do  this  is  one 
of  the  most  biting  griefs  of  some  parents 
in  their  old  age.  The  parental  love  is  not 
meant  to  be  selfish,  but  it  is  selfish  all  the  same. 
The  child's  carelessness  of  his  own  highest 
obligations  as  he  grows  up,  and  as  his  parents 
grow  old,  is  likewise  not  intentional,  but  it  is 
none  the  less  wicked. 

It  is  an  open  question  whether  with  a  large 
minority  of  people  the  joys  of  parenthood,  in 
the  long  run,  outweigh  its  griefs  and  disap- 
pointments. The  devotion  of  most  children 
to  their  parents  is  one  of  the  most  exquisite 
pictures  of  human  life.  Their  loyalty  and 
tenderness  are  alone  enough  to  make  us  be- 
lieve in  heaven.     But  the  selfish  neglect  and 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING   HOUSE 

disrespect  shown  by  some  people  toward  par- 
ents who  have  slaved  away  their  lives,  and 
have  foregone  many  comforts  for  their  chil- 
dren, is  one  of  the  saddest  chapters  of  human 
story — and  it  is  a  chapter  that  has  abundant 
illustrations  all  about  us. 

So  it  happens  that  the  relations  of  children 
with  parents  are  attended  with  a  mixture  of 
joy  and  grief.  There  ought  to  be  much  more 
joy  than  grief ;  and  any  scheme  that  offers  to 
increase  the  joys  and  reduce  the  griefs  is  a 
positive  gain.  Not  only  is  there  unhappiness 
between  parents  and  children,  but  this  often 
grows  worse  rather  than  better  from  year  to 
year,  and  tends  to  warp  the  natures  of  both 
the  parties.  A  more  notable  fact  is  that  be- 
cause the  parties  are  parents  and  children,  the 
warping  of  the  natures  of  both,  especially  of 
the  children,  is  more  rapid  and  more  pro- 
nounced. This  asymmetry  is  liable  to  occur 
even  in  cases  where  there  is  no  special  nervous 
friction  between  them.  Take  for  illustration 
two  nervous  and  irascible  parents.  Their  chil- 
dren are  hereditarily  nervous.  The  irritable 
natures  of  the  parents  accentuate  the  nervous- 
ness of  the  children,  and  vice  versa.  Both  par- 
ents are  slightly  abnormal,  and  in  the  same  di- 
rection— the  children  are  from  birth  usually 
more  abnormal,  and  in  the  same  way.  And  the 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING   HOUSE 

parents  and  children  usually  rasp  each  other, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  and  get  each 
other  out  of  patience  often  and  often.  This 
makes  matters  worse  for  both.  They  are  irri- 
tated by  the  presence  of  each  other,  by  the 
words  and  acts,  and  even  by  the  looks  of  each 
other — they  are  oikiomaniacs,  especially  the 
children,  who  show  it  more  violently  than  the 
parents  do. 

Nature  and  the  canons  of  society  have  tried 
to  prevent  all  this  by  making  it  unlikely  that 
couples  closely  alike  by  consanguinity,  or 
otherwise,  will  marry.  The  effect  of  this  in 
the  children  should  be  to  counteract  the  ec- 
centricity of  one  parent  by  an  opposite  one  of 
the  other ;  but  all  these  efforts  frequently  fail, 
and  a  couple  are  doomed  to  see  their  own 
identical  traits  enlarged  in  their  children. 
These  traits  are  exaggerated  in  the  children, 
and  they  grow  worse  by  the  daily  impact  of 
like  traits  of  their  parents. 

Why  cannot  some  of  this  warping  and  un- 
happiness  be  lessened  by  wise  and  voluntary 
changes  in  the  relations  of  parents  and  chil- 
dren? Must  the  misfits  of  these  factors  in 
society  continue  through  years  to  do  harm, 
simply  because  it  is  the  fashion  and  tradition 
that  people  must  raise  their  own  children,  and 
that  most  people  think  it  unnatural  and  wrong 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

not  to?  Parents  have  no  ownership  in  their 
children.  The  children  are  free  and  respon- 
sible souls,  with  various  moral  and  legal  rights, 
soon  after  they  are  born.  Parents  usually  for- 
get these  facts,  and  assume  that,  since  the  chil- 
dren begin  life  as  the  most  helpless  of  all  be- 
ings, they  must  somehow  be  the  property  of 
their  parents  till  they  are  of  age,  or  longer. 

Misfit  parents  are  sometimes  divorced  from 
each  other  by  the  courts  as  an  act  of  pathetic 
justice.  Ought  not  the  children  to  have  in 
some  degree  a  similar  privilege  as  to  parents? 
Now  and  then  a  child  is  divorced  from  his 
family  by  going  to  the  reform  school;  but 
usually  this  occurs  only  when  his  misdemean- 
ors run  against  the  interests  of  the  public  out- 
side of  his  own  household.  The  reasons  for 
his  separation  from  his  home,  which  arise  out 
of  the  conditions  within  the  family,  are  often 
quite  as  real  and  melancholy,  if  less  notorious 
than  those  which  carry  him  to  the  reforma- 
tory ;  and  in  these  instances  the  parents  and 
children  are  as  a  rule  equally  at  fault,  whether 
they  know  it  or  not.  But  are  they  equally  re- 
sponsible? Are  not  the  parents  more  respon- 
sible ? 

If  all  the  parties  could  agree  to  strive  un- 
selfishly to  improve  the  race,  as  well  as  them- 
selves, the  frequent  separation  of  parents  and 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING   HOUSE 

children  might  increase  their  happiness  and 
be  a  great  advantage  in  many  directions.  Nu- 
merous examples  in  the  observation  of  every 
thoughtful  person  should  make  this  postulate 
clear,  and  I  think  ought  to  carry  conviction  to 
any  reasonable  mind. 

Here,  for  instance,  are  two  nervous  and 
very  irascible  parents.  They  are  fastidious, 
captious,  pragmatical,  hypercritical;  they  flare 
up  at  trifles,  and  are  always  in  more  or  less 
trouble.  They  have  certain  sensibilities  to 
annoyance ;  perhaps  it  is  dirt,  perhaps  some  no- 
tion peculiar  to  themselves.  But  they  are  peo- 
ple who  are  potent  in  moving  the  world. 
Their  children  are  likely  to  have  the  same  bent 
increased;  they  are  more  hyperesthetic  and 
less  calm  and  stable  than  their  parents  are,  or 
were  at  their  ages.  If  a  door  slams  near  by 
they  jump  as  if  they  were  shot;  and  there  are 
certain  ways  and  words  of  others  that  always 
serve  as  sparks  at  which  they  explode  in  emo- 
tion or  temper. 

Can  anyone  doubt  that  both  the  parents 
and  children  so  constituted  are  made  worse  by 
every  day's  association  together?  The  par- 
ents are  always  nervous  and  grow  more  so; 
and  the  children  sometimes  are  so  nervous 
as  to  seem  to  approach  the  borderland  of  ac- 
tual lunacy.     To  the  abnormal  and  unwhole- 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING   HOUSE 

some  traits  which  they  have  transmitted  to 
their  children,  parents  add  the  exasperating 
effect  of  increasing  them  by  their  own  perpet- 
ual display  of  like  qualities. 

In  another  part  of  the  town  is  a  pair  of 
tranquil  people  who  have  some  tranquil  chil- 
dren. They  all  move  along  in  a  comfortable 
sort  of  way  and  trouble  themselves  little  about 
the  trifles  of  the  world  or  the  motion  of  the 
waters.  They  don't  appear  to  love  each  other 
overmuch  or  with  a  show ;  and  they  don't  nag 
each  other.  A  little  excitement  thrown  into 
their  lives  might  be  useful  to  them — it  would 
open  their  eyes. 

What  a  blessing  if  the  children  from  that 
other  and  nervous  household  could  be  dropped 
down  (and  to  stay)  into  this  one!  How  they 
would  grow  and  develop  in  a  better  way !  And 
their  irritability  would,  like  any  other  flame, 
grow  less  by  lack  of  fuel  to  feed  it.  They 
would  increase  in  tranquillity  day  by  day.  To 
have  them  in  the  family  would  be  positive 
spice  of  life  for  these  slow  and  undemonstra- 
tive parents,  and  they  would  be  proud  of  the 
acuteness  and  the  activity  of  these  new  chil- 
dren. They  would  themselves  actually  prick 
up  their  ears  in  consequence  and  grow  some- 
what. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  slow  and  dull  chil- 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

dren  could  come  into  the  nervous  household, 
they  would  be  entertained  and  awakened ;  they 
would  be  spurred  to  activity  and  new  occupa- 
tions that  they  would  doubtless  find  at  times 
amusing.  The  nervous  adults  of  the  house 
would  perhaps  take  a  more  tranquil  pace,  and 
might  at  least  be  glad  that  they  had  children 
under  their  roof  whose  nerves  were  not  grown 
on  the  surface  of  their  bodies,  and,  like  super- 
sensitive traps,  ready  to  be  snapped  by  a 
breath  of  air.  In  the  end,  all  these  people 
would  be  helped. 

It  is  perfectly  manifest  that  the  children  of 
the  two  families  which  I  have  described  ought 
to  be  swapped.  Of  course  the  same  end  would 
be  accomplished  if  the  parents  could  be 
swapped ;  but,  on  economic  grounds,  that 
would  be  less  convenient  than  to  swap  the  chil- 
dren. This  arrangement  would  work  great 
benefit  to  four  sets  of  persons — ^two  sets  of 
parents  and  two  groups  of  children.  The  nerv- 
ous parents  would  be  soothed  by  the  tranquil 
children,  who  would  in  turn  be  spurred  to 
greater  activity  and  usefulness.  The  quiet  and 
slow-going  parents,  on  the  other  hand,  would, 
be  stimulated  by  the  nervous  children,  who  in 
turn  would  have  their  hyperesthesia  calmed — 
they  would  learn  better  the  great  truth  that 
tranquillity  and  imperturbability  are  the  men- 

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A    DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

tal  qualities  that,  in  our  strenuous  civilization, 
are  most  of  all  to  be  coveted. 

Some  parents  love  their  children  too  demon- 
stratively. They  not  only  carry  this  emotion 
on  the  surface  of  their  lives  like  a  flower  on 
their  clothes,  but  they  insist  on  dissecting  it, 
tearing  asunder  its  petals  and  stamens,  not  to 
discover  its  construction — which  they  could 
never  understand — but  to  see  if  it  is  growing. 
They  are  troubled  if  their  children  fail  to  act 
similarly ;  and  the  children  learn  to  do  this 
usually,  or  in  disgust  go  to  the  opposite  ex- 
treme. This  makes  for  some  happiness,  but  it 
incurs  also  a  load  of  sorrow,  for  with  these 
people  happiness  comes  to  depend  so  much  on 
the  finer  surface  amenities,  that  it  is  sure  to  be 
jarred  more  or  less  by  the  accidents  of  daily 
life.  There  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  won- 
derful beauty  of  these  amenities.  Their  ab- 
sence would  be  a  distinct  loss  to  life  and  so- 
ciety, but  many  families  carry  them  too  far, 
and  if  stolid  children  could  be  adopted  by 
them,  it  would  be  a  gain  to  the  children ;  and 
the  loving  and  effervescent  children  taken  into 
calmer  families  would  bring  there  a  kind  of 
sunshine  that  their  new  parents  had  never 
dreamed  of.  Clearly,  some  swapping  here 
would  make  for  a  sum  total  of  more  happi- 
ness; at  the  same  time  the  tendency  to  the 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

growth  of  warped  child  natures  would  be  les- 
sened. 

There  are  some  foibles  and  sins  that  are 
transmitted  from  parents  to  their  own  children 
that  adopted  children  are  less  likely  to  take. 
Some  parents  fib  to  their  children,  usually  un- 
wittingly and  carelessly,  but  the  children  see 
through  the  gauze  and  learn  to  manage  their 
parents,  usually  or  often  by  a  counterplay  of 
deception.  Parents  warn  of  punishments  to 
come  for  possible  transgressions;  then  forget 
or  fear  or  hesitate  to  inflict  the  penalty.  The 
children  see  this  sham  and  grow  deceitful; 
besides,  it  is  more  easy  for  them  to  learn  de- 
ceit by  reason  of  their  inheritance  from  their 
parents — like  parent,  like  child.  These  par- 
ents not  only  are  dishonest  with  their  children, 
but  they  are  dishonest  with  their  neighbors ; 
and  the  children  are  quick  to  adopt  such  meth- 
ods themselves ;  these  eccentricities  of  parents 
are  liable  to  be  increased  in  the  adult  lives  of 
the  children,  to  the  harm  and  loss  of  society. 

Such  children  would  be  much  profited  if 
they  could  be  adopted  into  families  where  the 
promise  of  a  punishment  to  come  is  as  impos- 
sible as  any  other  sin  of  the  days  of  barbarism, 
and  where  disingenuousness  to  a  neighbor  is 
unknown.  Finding  the  new  household  to  be 
managed   in  general   on   the   basis   of   truth, 

134 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

candor,  and  good  fellowship,  the  deceitful  chil- 
dren would  soon  learn  how  cheap  their  meth- 
ods are,  and  grow  better.  Then  if  the  deceit- 
ful and  barbaric  parents  could  adopt  some 
children  out  of  these  better  families,  the  chil- 
dren might  work  for  them  a  like  reformation. 
The  exchange  would  be  rather  hard  on  the 
candid  parents  and  their  own  honest  children, 
who  would  be  expected  to  reform  the  parents 
and  children  of  the  other  families ;  but  a  mis- 
sionary spirit  is  honorable,  especially  when  it 
finds  its  object  near  at  home ;  and  good  folks 
should  be  ready  and  willing  to  sacrifice  their 
own  comfort  to  some  degree  for  the  better- 
ment of  others.  What  is  our  existence  for  if 
not  to  better  others  as  well  as  ourselves? 

I  have  heard  of  parents  who  are  averse  to 
having  children,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  some  of  these  would  be  glad  enough  to 
be  rid  of  their  children  after  they  have  them, 
provided  that  were  possible  without  public 
censure,  and  with  ease  to  a  mental  state  they 
call  conscience.  But  the  clearing  house  pro- 
posed would  insure  that  such  children  should 
be  adopted  into  childless  families  of  kindly 
people  who  would  take  good  care  of  them. 
There  would  be  kept  a  standing  list  of  such 
families  who  are  eager  to  give  their  lives  and 
their  love  for  children  of  their  adoption — to 

135 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

the  great  benefit  of  themselves,  of  the  children, 
and  of  society  at  large. 

What  objection  can  there  be  to  an  arrange- 
ment that  would  make  these  three  groups  of 
people  happier — the  children,  and  the  two  sets 
of  parents?  Why  not  try  in  this  way  to  cor- 
rect some  of  the  multifarious  misfits  of  chil- 
dren and  parents?  The  few  instances  I  have 
cited  are  only  typical  examples  ;  and  they  show 
the  need  of  some  new  and  drastic  remedy  for 
a  very  common  evil. 

I  know  the  stock  argument  that  one  can 
never  consent  to  "  give  up  "  or  into  the  hands 
of  another  the  children  of  his  own  flesh  and 
blood ;  that  it  is  unnatural ;  that  nobody  can 
be  so  good  to  a  child  as  its  own  mother — and 
so  on.  But  people  do  give  up  their  children, 
more  or  less,  when  they  marry  them  ofif.  They 
very  much  give  up  their  daughters  then,  and 
often  find  they  have  given  up  their  sons ;  and 
they  frequently  do  this  without  the  slightest 
difficulty,  sometimes  even  with  gladness,  es- 
pecially if  their  own  financial  burdens  are  less- 
ened by  the  transaction. 

The  wealthy  people  nearly  always  give  up 
their  children  three  quarters  of  the  time,  and 
four  fifths  in  substance,  to  nurses  and  at- 
tendants (the  latter  often  selected  with  less 
discretion  than  they  choose  their  clothesmak- 

136 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

ers)  ;  and  they  give  them  up  to  their  own  de- 
vices with  their  playmates,  sometimes  to  their 
good,  but  often  to  their  harm,  a  part  of  nearly 
every  day.  Not  a  few  mothers  are  glad 
enough  to  trust  their  children  to  nurses,  at- 
tendants, teachers,  and  playmates  for  as  many 
hours  a  day  as  possible. 

Many  times  a  mother  finds  herself  so  nerv- 
ous from  the  influence  of  her  children  and 
from  the  demands  of  society  that  she  must  go 
away  from  both  of  them  and  rest  for  days  and 
weeks ;  then  she  certainly  leaves  her  children 
to  the  care  of  others.  This  argument  about 
not  giving  up  children  to  other  hands  evi- 
dently needs  to  be  shorn  of  some  sophistry  and 
a  good  deal  of  the  rhapsody  of  egoism. 

The  notion  that  no  woman  but  the  mother 
of  a  child  can  be  as  good  to  it  as  she  is  is  a 
fallacy ;  it  even  has  some  of  the  earmarks  of 
nonsense.  The  discreet  nurse  is  often  better 
to  and  better  for  the  child  than  its  own 
mother ;  and  the  child-loving  foster  mother  is 
usually  a  safer  guide  for  the  best  interests  of 
the  child.  The  mother  usually  does  more 
things  at  the  selfish  behest  of  the  child — things 
that  are  harmful  to  it — than  the  foster  mother 
does.  Besides,  the  mother  is  more  likely  to  do 
foolish  things  for  her  child,  when  moved  by 
the  sentimental  heresies  of  motherhood.  Thus, 

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A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

when  the  child  is  sick,  she  refuses  to  have  a 
nurse,  but  insists  on  sitting  up  and  watching 
with  it  for  many  nights  in  succession ;  and 
then,  so  overcome  by  fatigue  and  drowsiness 
that  she  is  worse  than  useless,  she  perhaps 
blunders  and  gives  a  poison  instead  of  a  dose 
of  good  medicine.  A  foster  mother  is  not  half 
so  likely  to  be  foolish  and  spoil  in  herself  the 
good  nurse  the  child  needs ;  she  is  more  apt  to 
be  guided  by  sense,  less  likely  to  be  swayed 
by  the  frenzy  of  an  unstable  conscience.  Like 
the  stepmother  —  and  rather  less  unfairly 
treated  than  she — the  foster  mother  never  has 
had  a  fair  judgment  at  the  hands  of  her  critics. 
There  is  not  a  more  devoted  person  in  the 
world.  She  not  only  worships  her  adopted 
child,  but  she  sometimes  worships  real  moth- 
erhood, and  the  idea  of  it  in  the  child's  mind, 
as  benighted  people  cling  to  a  fetish.  Think 
of  her  avidity  for  a  baby  to  cherish,  leading 
her  to  actual  theft  to  get  one !  Then  of  her 
guarding  for  years  the  secret  that  she  is  not 
the  real  mother — when  invariably  the  child 
will  love  her  more  if  it  knows  the  truth !  For 
the  child,  as  it  grows  up,  must  appreciate  the 
truth  that  tender  care  and  support  which  is 
unprompted  by  consanguinity  is  a  finer  thing 
by  reason  of  this  fact. 

The  foster  mother  is  usually  a  mother  from 

138 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

deliberate  design,  not  from  accident ;  and  chil- 
dren once  in  her  possession  are,  as  a  rule, 
cared  for  cheerfully.  She  is  less  disposed  to 
give  them  over  to  the  care  and  instruction  of 
servants  than  natural  parents  are — that  is,  she 
is  a  little  more  likely  to  be  normal  in  the 
bringing  up  of  her  children  than  are  natural 
mothers.  Moreover,  under  her  care  the  chil- 
dren have  relatively  more  chance  for  spon- 
taneous development ;  she  is  a  trifle  more  apt 
to  appreciate  the  fact  that  after  a  child  is  born 
it  usually,  through  the  influences  of  its  imme- 
diate environment,  evolves  itself  as  to  its  in- 
tellectual and  moral  life,  much  more  than  it 
is  ever  "  raised  "  by  the  set  rules  for  its  daily 
conduct. 

Almost  the  sole  foolishness  of  the  foster 
mother  is  to  forget  that  her  spiritual  privilege 
is  so  much  greater  than  that  of  the  real  mother 
that  she  ought  to  be  very  proud  of  it — instead 
of  trying  the  usually  impossible  task  of  keep- 
ing her  child  all  his  life  in  ignorance  of  who 
she  is  and  who  he  is.  When  the  child  finally 
discovers  the  truth — as  he  almost  always  does, 
and  from  alien  if  not  unfriendly  lips — his  re- 
spect for  the  foster  mother  invariably  falls 
a  little.  People  cannot  actually  waste  foolish- 
ness without  stepping  down  from  some  of 
the  pedestals  on  which  their  admirers  have 

139 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

placed  them.  Forgiveness  is  blessed,  but  the 
need  of  it  tends  to  lessen  the  love  that  is  left. 
And  this  blindness  of  the  foster  mother  not 
only  does  her  injury  in  the  end,  when  the  truth 
comes  out,  but  it  robs  the  child  of  the  great 
moral  benefits  that  ought  to  come  of  the 
knowledge  that  his  care  and  nurture  have  been 
due  to  the  disinterested  love  of  people  not 
bound  by  law  to  keep  him. 

It  may  be  asked  whether  children  growing 
up  under  the  care  of  foster  parents  can  have 
in  after  life  a  feeling  toward  them  as  tender 
and  wholesome  as  they  would  toward  blood 
parents.  Does  fosterage  lessen  the  best  qual- 
ity of  filiality?  I  think  not.  Fosterage  may 
change  it  a  trifle,  but  the  best  essence  of  it 
comes  to  a  child  through  a  memory  of  the 
useful  and  permanently  happifying  things  that 
have  been  done  for  him.  The  man  recalls  best 
and  with  most  fervor  of  thankfulness  those 
child  benefits  that  gave  him  the  inside  track 
in  his  worthy  ambitions.  He  easily  forgets  the 
candy  and  the  caresses  of  his  childhood ;  but 
those  hints  and  favors  that  helped  him  to  be  a 
man  among  men  and  women,  and  to  lead  in 
his  struggle  for  success,  have  made  him  an 
everlasting  debtor  to  those  who  have  helped 
him,  and  he  rarely  forgets  this  obligation. 
His  gratitude  goes  out  to  the  parent,  the  foster 

140 


A   DOMESTIC   CLEARING    HOUSE 

parent,  or  the  friend  of  his  youth,  about 
equally  for  equal  help.  The  parent  may  easily 
lose  this  homage,  and  the  foster  parent  or 
friend  may  gain  it,  but  can  anybody  say  that 
it  is  uncommendable  or  not  of  the  best  essence 
of  filiality  ? 


141 


The  True  Gospel  of  Sleep 


The  True  Gospel  of  Sleep 


In  the  popular  mind  there  must  be  some 
mistakes  about  sleep,  so  variant  and  dissimi- 
lar are  the  current  notions  of  our  need  of  it, 
of  the  effects  of  it,  and  of  the  lack  of  it.  All 
the  theories  about  sleep  cannot  be  correct ; 
some  of  them  must  be  wide  of  the  mark. 

One  man  is  sure  that  for  health  and  strength 
he  needs  only  four  or  five  hours  of  sleep  out 
of  each  day  of  twenty-four  hours ;  he  has 
demonstrated  this  thesis  experimentally,  for 
himself,  over  and  over  again ;  it  is  his  gospel 
of  sleep ;  and  he  quote  numerous  people  above 
childhood  who  have  like  views  and  experi- 
ences. Another  thinks  he  must  have  eight  or 
nine  hours  and  cannot  do  with  less,  and,  as  all 
men  tend  to  measure  others  by  the  yardstick 
that  fits  themselves,  he  is  sure  to  believe  that 
no  one  should  have  less  than  one  third  of  his 
existence  spent  in  sleep. 

145 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL  OF   SLEEP 

Many  physicians  freely  teach  this  latter 
view,  and  insist  that  children  especially  must 
have  an  abundance  of  sleep  or  be  in  peril  of 
nervous  and  mental  bankruptcy.  We  are  told, 
and  have  long  taught,  that  infants  should  sleep 
a  large  part  of  the  time,  especially  during  their 
first  year,  in  order  to  be  safe  from  calamity 
to  their  brains.  A  large  measure  of  sleep  is 
surely  useful,  as  well  as  convenient,  for  all 
babies ;  yet  there  are  instances  of  infants  and 
small  children  who  have  for  many  months  to- 
gether slept  less  than  four  hours  in  the  twenty- 
four,  and  come  out  of  the  experience  with 
vigorous  minds  and  bodies. 

Great  numbers  of  adults  in  our  modem  life 
of  high  nervous  tension  are  victims  of  insom- 
nia, more  now  than  ever  before,  and  the  num- 
ber is  apparently  increasing  rather  rapidly  in 
certain  communities.  Drugs  to  produce  sleep 
were  never  in  such  demand  as  now  ;  were  never 
used  so  freely,  both  as  a  temporary  expedient 
and  as  a  daily  habit ;  they  are  sold  in  vast 
quantities  all  over  the  nervous  world,  and  are 
used  according  to  the  whim  of  the  sleepless, 
more  often  without  than  with  the  advice  of 
their  physicians.  Insomnia  is  therefore  a  fa- 
vorite harvest  field  of  the  exploiter  of  "  pat- 
ent "  nostrums,  for  he  well  knows  that,  when 
driven  to  desperation  by  sleeplessness,  its  vic- 

146 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

tim  is  ready  to  do  anything  or  take  anything 
that  promises  reUef ;  and  if  sleep  comes  as  an 
effect  of  a  drug  he  is  ready  to  forgive  other 
and  perhaps  resulting  ills,  some  of  which  may 
in  the  end  be  worse  than  the  insomnia.  And 
the  other  ills  that  come  of  the  habitual  use  of 
soporifics  are  many  and  grave,  and  range  all 
the  way  from  trifling  inconvenience  to  severe 
sickness  and  death. 

Possibly  some  of  the  sleeping  potions  may 
do  good  by  helping  to  sleep  without  inflicting 
any  incidental  harm  to  the  system ;  but  the  evi- 
dence is  strong  and  accumulating  that  most,  if 
not  all,  of  the  soporific  drugs  do  harm  in  some 
way,  especially  the  coal-tar  products,  and 
all  those  that  produce  their  effects  by  obtund- 
ing  the  sensibility  of  the  nervous  system. 
While  their  use  may  be  justified  by  an  oc- 
casional exigency,  they  are  in  the  main  mis- 
chievous, because,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
they  undertake  a  function  and  do  a  thing 
for  the  body  that  good  hygiene  and  a  better 
course  of  living  should  as  a  rule  make  un- 
necessary. 

The  testimony  of  the  sufferers  with  insom- 
nia certainly  seems,  on  the  face  of  it,  to  con- 
firm their  theory  of  the  seriousness  of  this 
affliction,  for  they  find  that  a  night  without 
sleep,  even  if  they  are  in  bed,  with  their  bodies 

147 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

resting,  more  or  less  unfits  them  for  the  duties 
of  the  coming  day,  and  that  after  a  good  night 
they  are  fresh  and  strong  and  satisfied.  And 
these  data  are  correct ;  after  a  wakeful  night 
these  people  are  unnerved  for  the  day,  and  af- 
ter a  night  of  good  sleep  they  are  fit  and  cheer- 
ful. Whether  their  theory  is  correct,  that  lack 
of  sleep  alone  does  the  mischief,  is  another 
question,  and  there  is  reason  to  doubt  the  the- 
ory, and  to  suspect,  if  not  to  know,  that  the 
insomnia  is  only  one  of  the  several  factors  in 
the  problem,  one  of  several  co-results  of  a 
common  and  another  cause,  and  not  itself  the 
sole  cause  of  all  the  harm. 

It  is  evident  that  the  victims  believe  implic- 
itly in  the  current  theory.  They  easily  come 
to  dread  a  sleepless  night ;  being  awake  in  bed 
in  the  dark  becomes  to  them  hades,  veritably ; 
they  look  forward  to  such  a  possibility  with 
nervous  apprehension  if  not  horror,  which 
makes  them  less  likely  to  sleep ;  indeed,  it  often 
prevents  sleep  completely.  In  the  throes  of 
wakefulness,  when  they  have  gone  to  bed  for 
the  purpose  of  sleeping,  they  become  so  an- 
noyed and  agitated  as  to  make  sleep  hard,  or 
impossible,  to  court ;  they  count  up  and  down 
long  columns  of  numbers,  they  say  the  alpha- 
bet, and  repeat  the  multiplication  table  or 
their  prayers  in  their  efforts  to  entice  slumber, 

148 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

but  unavailingly.  So  they  He  awake  tossing 
in  restlessness  and  chagrin  till  morning;  and 
afterwards  they  look  back  on  the  experience 
with  a  sense  of  gloom.  No  nightmare  could 
be  so  terrible. 

It  is  not  unnatural  that  they  should  attribute 
their  bad  symptoms  to  the  lack  of  sleep,  for 
that  is  the  easiest  conclusion,  but  it  is  only 
half  true  if  true  at  all.  It  is  vastly  important 
in  this  study  to  keep  the  horse  in  front  of  the 
cart,  for  the  tendency  is  strong  to  reverse 
them.  The  true  story  is  that  the  horrors  of  in- 
somnia are  slightly  or  only  moderately  due  to 
want  of  sleep — very  much  more  due  to  insom- 
niphobia,  with  which,  in  some  degree,  nearly 
every  such  patient  permits  himself  unneces- 
sarily and  foolishly  to  become  afflicted.  His 
experience  is  analogous  to  that  of  the  victim  of 
consumption  who  has  night  sweats.  This  lat- 
ter believes,  till  he  is  taught  otherwise  and  bet- 
ter, that  his  bad  day  is  due  to  the  night  sweat 
preceding  it.  This  is  a  most  unscientific  infer- 
ence. Really,  the  bad  day  and  the  sweats  are 
co-results  of  another  and  a  different  influence ; 
they  are  not  cause  and  effect.  When  the  pa- 
tient learns  this  truth,  and  that  the  sweat  is 
not  harmful  in  itself,  but  a  possible  benefit  by 
the  expulsion  of  poison  from  his  body,  he  dis- 
covers that  it  is  only  a  trifling  inconvenience, 

149 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

not  a  calamity,  and  he  bears  it  with  equanim- 
ity if  not  with  actual  pleasure. 

The  victim  of  insomnia  is  equally  wrong 
and  equally  unfortunate  in  his  reasoning 
about  his  case.  He  honestly  believes  that  loss 
of  the  sleep  which  he  thinks  is  his  due  is 
fraught  with  the  certainty  of  great  injury ;  he 
laments  his  infirmity  and  often  fears  he  will 
become  insane,  and  he  may  invite  insanity  by 
his  worry,  when,  if  he  could  stop  his  fretting, 
he  would  find  himself  hurt  very  little,  if  at  all, 
by  it.  The  very  attitude  of  his  mind  when  he 
goes  to  bed  tends  to  keep  him  awake,  for  he  is 
in  a  state  of  mental  expectancy  of  insomnia, 
and  the  longer  his  slumber  is  delayed  the  more 
demoralized  he  becomes,  the  more  exalted  is 
his  irritation,  and  the  less  likely  is  he  to  fall 
asleep.  What  is  worse,  he  is  very  unhappy 
about  it,  he  fumes  and  profanates  his  priv- 
ileges ;  and  this  mood  tends  still  more  strongly 
against  slumber. 

If  he  can  go  to  bed  and  sincerely  resolve 
that  he  does  not  wish  to  sleep,  but  would 
rather  keep  awake  all  night,  and  perhaps  read 
an  unexciting  book  err  otherwise  try  to  drive 
oflf  slumber ;  if  he  can  bring  his  mind  genuinely 
and  ingenuously  to  this  mood,  which  is  one  of 
pleasure  at  being  awake — then  he  will  prob- 
ably soon  fall  asleep,  and  so  remain  the  night 

150 


THE   TRUE    GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

through.  The  chief  thing  is  the  mood  of 
pleasure,  or,  lacking  that,  stoical  indifference 
as  to  whether  sleep  comes  or  not;  these  emo- 
tions make  the  terror  impossible,  and  bring 
sufficient  sleep  in  nearly  every  case — not  eight 
hours  it  may  be,  but  enough ;  certainly  enough 
to  prove  that  this  measure  is  far  safer  and 
wiser  than  the  common  resort  to  soporific 
drugs. 

There  is  another  truth  that  is  even  more 
fundamental  than  the  one  just  referred  to,  a 
truth  that  is  substantially  never  mentioned  by 
students  of  this  subject.  This  is  that  our  the- 
ory is  wrong  that  we  should  go  to  bed  and  stay 
there  eight  or  ten  hours  a  day  for  the  chief 
purpose  of  sleeping.  Sleep,  go  to  sleep ;  get 
asleep ;  sleep  is  the  great  restorer ;  blessed 
sleep — these  are  the  cries  that  always  ring  in 
our  ears,  and  that  have  probably  in  some  form 
rung  in  the  ears  of  all  the  recent  generations 
as  a  guide  in  life,  and  as  indicating  the  drift 
of  thought  about  sleep.  But  it  is  a  narrow  and 
one-sided  view.  Of  course  sleep  rests  the 
tired  brain,  and  lets  its  thinking  cortical  cells 
recuperate  from  the  strain  of  labor  that  has 
lowered  them;  but  what  of  the  weal  of  the 
tired  body  whose  tissues  have  been  lowered 
by  the  work  of  the  day  ?  This  need  has  been 
almost  wholly  neglected  in  our  scheme  of  rea- 

151 


THE   TRUE    GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

soning,  and  the  poor  body  has  had  to  get  what 
benefit  it  may  as  an  incident  of  the  sleep.  On 
the  contrary,  we  should  go  to  bed  to  rest  the 
tired  body  and  let  sleep  come  as  an  incident ; 
rest  of  the  body  should  be  the  chief  aim ;  if  we 
will  go  to  bed  with  that  purpose  the  sleep  will 
mostly  take  care  of  itself.  Man  can  by  his 
own  volition  send  his  body  to  bed  as  readily 
as  he  can  chop  his  wood,  and  so  his  body  rests ; 
but  sleep  comes  as  a  consequence  of  the  con- 
ditions of  his  body  and  brain;  and  some  of 
these  conditions  are  fatigue,  horizontal  pos- 
ture, quietness,  silence,  and  darkness  to  shut 
out  disturbing  mental  impressions  and  to  in- 
cline the  brain  against  thinking.  Sleep  does 
not  come  and  never  can  come  by  an  act  of  the 
will,  as  one  rises  and  walks.  The  brain  puts 
itself  to  sleep  as  its  physical  conditions  entice, 
and  quite  regardless  of  the  will. 

With  an  active  physical  life,  the  body  should 
probably  rest  horizontal  about  one  third  of  the 
time;  and  it  is  not  necessary  that  the  brain 
should  be  unconscious  in  sleep  all  this  while. 
Perhaps  no  one  sleeps  too  much ;  sleep  can 
hardly  injure  the  brain ;  but  we  have  had  an 
extreme  estimate  of  the  amount  of  sleep  which 
it  is  indispensable  that  a  rested  body  should 
have.  This  is  a  most  practical  truth;  and 
every  insomniac  who  gets  himself  down  to  or 

152 


THE   TRUE    GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

up  to  this  mental  basis  begins  at  once  to  bene- 
fit from  it,  and  he  finds  that  lying  awake  an 
hour  or  two  of  a  night,  or  before  rising  in  the 
morning,  is  not  only  not  harmful,  but  is  not 
specially  unpleasant ;  darkness  ceases  to  be  ter- 
rible to  him,  and  he  finds  he  can  have  good 
thoughts  as  well  as  bad  ones,  when  he  is  alone 
with  himself  in  the  silence  of  the  night.  Then 
he  is  surprised  to  find  his  terror  gone;  he 
ceases  to  be  an  insomniphobiac,  and  becomes 
a  happy  philosopher. 

But  this  mental  basis  is  one  of  the  hardest 
things  in  all  the  experiences  of  life  for  the 
distraught  poor  sleepers  to  reach.  It  is  hard 
for  them  to  change  their  philosophy  of  sleep 
and  their  habits  about  it.  They  unconsciously 
and  unwittingly  come  to  regard  the  act  of  ly- 
ing in  bed  awake  in  the  night  as  a  punishment, 
if  not  a  sin.  They  are  chagrined  if  they  do 
not  drop  off  to  sleep  promptly  on  going  to  bed ; 
and  if  they  awaken  before  daylight  they  fret 
till  rising  time,  or  they  get  up  before  their  rest 
is  over  because  they  are  awake.  Is  man  so 
weak  and  mean  an  animal  that  he  cannot  en- 
dure in  bed  at  night  the  waking  presence  of 
himself  alone,  but  must  have  the  constant  wak- 
ing company  of  his  kind  or  of  the  light — or 
perhaps  of  his  dog! 

This  fuming  tendency  of  the  mind  is  a  most 

153 


THE   TRUE    GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

interesting  trait,  but  a  most  unfortunate  ex- 
perience. It  is  quite  as  likely  to  reveal  itself 
about  a  trifle  as  for  the  momentous  things  of 
life.  A  man  will  be  extremely  annoyed  and 
impatient  because  you  keep  him  taking  a  pill 
three  times  a  day  for  weeks,  although  the  pill 
is  sugar-coated,  is  swallowed  easily,  and  pro- 
duces not  a  symptom  of  which  he  is  conscious. 
If  it  were  a  sugar-coated  bread  pill,  and  he  did 
not  know  this,  he  would  grieve  about  it  as 
freely.  And  we  are  all  witnesses  of  countless 
lamentations  of  people  because  of  trifling  dis- 
charges from  their  throats  and  noses,  of  harm- 
less mucus  each  day.  We  know  and  they 
know  that  no  pain  or  discomfort  comes  of  it, 
yet  they  are  in  daily  terror  of  the  awful  con- 
sequences they  suppose  to  attend  this  trifling 
thing  labeled  catarrh  that  harms  no  one.  So 
we  suffer  ourselves  to  be  terrified  by  an  hour 
more  of  conscious  life  each  day  than  we  guess 
to  be  normal — an  hour  more  of  ourselves. 
How  foolish  we  are ! 

It  is  hard  to  unlearn  the  lessons  of  a  life- 
time, especially  when  they  are  reinforced  by 
beliefs  that  are  hereditary  from  a  thousand 
generations  of  usage,  and  to  see  as  agreeable 
some  things  that  have  always  been  held  to  be 
disagreeable.  The  sleep  problem  illustrates 
this  truth  most  vividly. 

154 


THE   TRUE    GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

One  of  the  hardest  sides  of  the  problem  is 
the  contention  that  much  less  than  the  classical 
eight  hours  of  daily  sleep  will  do.  But  there  are 
many  facts  to  prove  this  thesis.  People  who 
lie  abed  long  hours  reading,  sleep  correspond- 
ingly little,  and  they  live  as  long  and  keep  as 
well  as  the  average.  It  is  notorious  that  many 
eminent  men  of  history  have  slept  little,  and 
I  think  hardly  one  who  can  be  called  an  in- 
tellectual giant  has  been  accustomed  to  a  large 
amount  of  sleep.  Nor  is  it  necessary  that  chil- 
dren, even  infants,  should  have  as  much  sleep 
as  we  have  supposed.  Many  years  ago  my 
eyes  were  opened  by  an  experience  with  a 
wakeful  baby.  He  slept  only  about  three  or 
four  hours  a  day  on  an  average  for  a  year,  as 
shown  by  the  most  accurate  records.  This 
wakefulness  was  due,  apparently,  to  some 
nervous  predisposition.  Quieting  drugs  were 
tried,  but  it  was  soon  found  that  dangerously 
large  doses  would  be  required  to  increase  his 
sleep  materially ;  and  so,  fearing  the  drugs 
more  than  the  insomnia,  his  management  was 
confined  to  good  nursing  and  good  nutrition. 
I  fully  expected  that  the  child's  brain  would 
be  permanently  harmed  by  this  experience,  but 
nothing  of  the  sort  occurred.  At  the  end  of  a 
year  and  a  half  he  was  sleeping  better,  and  by 
the  end  of  his  second  year  he  was  getting  as 

155 


THE    TRUE    GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

much  sleep  as  the  average  child  of  his  age, 
and  he  was  well  and  vigorous  and  had  a  good 
mind.  Then  a  strange  thing  happened ;  he  be- 
gan to  sleep  more  than  other  children,  and  by 
his  sixth  year,  when  he  entered  school,  he  was 
sleeping  about  fourteen  hours  daily.  By  his 
tenth  year  he  apparently  had  paid  back  to 
Nature  what  had  been  lost,  and  was  sleeping 
like  other  children  of  his  age.  He  was  per- 
fectly well  in  mind  and  body,  active  and  mis- 
chievous, and  was  well  abreast  of  his  school- 
mates in  his  studies.  One  such  case  is  enough 
to  demolish  the  theory  that  a  child  must,  that 
all  children  must,  sleep  a  great  deal  or  be 
ruined. 

It  is  a  common  experience  for  a  man  to  put 
ofif  his  bedtime  until  a  late  hour  because  he 
thinks  he  cannot  sleep  till  then ;  or  to  walk  or 
work  so  as  to  tire  his  body  profoundly  before 
going  to  bed,  in  order  that  he  shall  be  sure  to 
sleep ;  or  to  get  up  at  an  absurdly  early  hour 
in  the  morning,  because  he  has  awakened  and 
cannot  sleep  any  longer.  In  all  these  ways  he 
is  wrong,  for  in  them  all  he  follows  the  bad 
principle  that  we  should  go  to  bed  chiefly  for 
sleep.  We  are  foolishly  unhappy  by  lying  in 
bed  awake,  in  the  dark,  and  with  nothing  to  do. 
We  are  worse  than  children  afraid  of  ghosts. 
It  is  an  unreasonable  and  unreasoning  fear, 

156 


THE    TRUE    GOSPEL    OF    SLEEP 

and  one  that  any  sensible  person  should  have 
no  difficulty  in  putting  aside. 

The  body  ought  to  be  well  rested  every  day, 
and  in  the  horizontal  posture.  The  erect  po- 
sition that  is  maintained  through  nearly  all 
our  waking  hours  makes  this  indispensable. 
We  are  physically  handicapped  as  compared 
with  the  fourfooted  beasts ;  we  need  more 
rest  of  body  than  they,  and  rest  horizontal ; 
and  if  we  get  enough  rest  of  body  we  usually 
get  enough  sleep,  if  we  only  let  ourselves  sleep, 
and  do  not  prevent  it  by  worrying.  But  we 
should,  as  far  as  possible,  seek  those  physical 
conditions  that  encourage  sleep  while  we  are 
resting.  That  rest  of  body  is  more  necessary 
than  much  sleep,  and  that  insomnia  is  clearly 
provoked  by  an  easily  prevented  mental  mood, 
are  not  reasons  for  us  to  neglect  any  of  the 
obvious  aids  to  easy  slumber.  These  ought  to 
be   studied   carefully  and  used   resolutely. 

Light  keeps  some  people  awake ;  usually 
more  than  need  be,  because  they  worry  about 
it  and  magnify  it  as  an  impediment.  Most 
people  can  have  their  bed  hours  in  the  dark ; 
they  can  either  go  to  bed  early  enough  to  have 
eight  dark  hours,  or  they  can  darken  their 
rooms.  Many  are  kept  awake  by  noises ;  often 
needlessly  kept  awake  by  trifling  sounds  that 
would  be  wholly  negligible  save  for  their  pro- 

157 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

pensit}'  to  be  nagged  by  them.  The  irritation 
grows  by  indulgence ;  every  time  they  hear  the 
sounds  and  regard  them  as  annoying,  the  hor- 
ror grows.  If  the  noises  are  produced  by  peo- 
ple or  by  animals,  and  therefore  may  be  pre- 
ventable, the  hatefulness  is  usually  greater; 
the  sounds  of  the  wind  and  waves  and  rain, 
or  even  gentle  thunder,  are  less  sleep-killing 
than  the  coughing  or  snoring  of  an  innocent 
neighbor  or  the  distant  barking  of  a  dog. 
Most  persons  can  overcome  much  of  any 
morbid  sensitiveness  to  sound  that  they  may 
have,  if  they  understand  these  truths  and  will 
be  sensible.  But  few  will  try  hard  enough  and 
be  wise  enough  for  this  consummation ;  and 
so  some  remedy  for  the  noises  of  creation  is 
proper  for  such  people,  if  a  remedy  that  is 
not  hurtful  can  be  found.  The  measure  re- 
sorted to  for  this  purpose  must  be  mostly  sub- 
jective; the  noises  themselves  can  be  con- 
trolled but  little ;  they  must  be  kept  out ;  the 
sound  waves  must  be  prevented  from  entering 
the  ears.  Cotton  stuffed  into  the  ear  channels 
does  a  little  good,  but  some  waves  pass 
through  it  unless  it  is  packed  in  so  firmly  as 
to  cause  discomfort,  which  of  course  renders 
the  device  nugatory.  A  cloth  or  other  dress- 
ing tied  over  the  ears  may  keep  out  many 
noises,  but  here  again  the  apparatus,  in  order 

158 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

to  be  efficient,  must  press  so  tightly  as  to  do 
more  harm  than  good.  The  thing  needed  is  an 
air-tight,  non-vibrating  stopper  for  the  ears; 
one  that  will  not  itself  make  a  disagreeable 
sensation  by  pressure  or  otherwise ;  one  that  is 
easily  applied  by  the  patient  himself;  and  one 
that  is  harmless. 

Common  paraffin  seems  to  fill  these  condi- 
tions; it  is  easily  used,  is  harmless  and  won- 
derfully efficient.  A  small  mass  of  the  sub- 
stance is  warmed  in  the  mouth,  chewed  perhaps 
to  soften  it  the  more  rapidly,  and  is  then 
pressed  firmly  but  gently  into  the  ear.  It 
adjusts  itself  instantly  to  the  ear  tube,  hardens 
as  it  cools,  and  remains  an  almost  complete 
bar  to  the  passage  of  sound  waves,  without 
producing  a  disagreeable  sensation,  indeed, 
with  so  little  sensation  of  any  sort  that  its 
presence  is  soon  forgotten.  It  is  applied  at 
bedtime  and  removed  by  a  finger  in  the  morn- 
ing; or  it  may  be  worn  during  the  day,  if  it 
comforts  the  patient,  but  not  all  the  day,  for 
fear  of  interfering  with  the  normal  drying  of 
the  external  ear.  It  may  be  used  in  this  way 
for  a  long  time  with  no  harm  of  any  sort,  and 
with  the  great  advantage  that  it  makes  the 
patient  nearly,  or  quite,  independent  of  the  un- 
avoidable noises  of  his  environment.  This 
device  may  render  it  unnecessary  to  go  to  the 

159 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

country  to  sleep  in  order  to  escape  from  the 
city  noises ;  it  may  make  it  less  necessary  to 
keep  the  children  still  to  avoid  waking  their 
elders,  and  it  may  help  the  sensitive  children 
to  finish  their  day  naps  in  spite  of  the  noises 
about  them. 

Many  people  sleep  poorly  for  want  of  suf- 
ficient clothing  in  bed ;  coldness  of  the  feet  is 
especially  apt  to  keep  them  awake.  A  good 
bed  is  needful,  for  it  rests  the  body  most,  and 
so  helps  toward  sleep.  The  remedies  for  these 
defects  are  obvious,  but  often  bevond  reach. 
A  spread-out  newspaper  placed  between  the 
blankets  has  the  heat-keeping  power  of  an- 
other blanket — and  old  newspapers  are  cheap. 
Overfeeding  often  produces  insomnia,  if  it 
does  not  make  the  drowsiness  of  indigestion, 
causing  heavy  sleep  in  the  early  evening  and 
miserable  wakefulness  afterwards ;  hunger 
sometimes  prevents  sleep  at  night — corrected 
by  a  cup  of  bread  and  milk  at  bedtime;  and 
overstimulation,  especially  with  cofl^ee  and  tea, 
is  often  fatal  to  good  sleep.  These  troubles 
are  always  correctable.  Onlv  a  little  common 
sense  and  a  trifle  of  courage  are  needful.  A 
loaded  large  intestine  often  keeps  a  sensitive 
person  awake  for  half  the  night,  when  a 
prompt  evacuation  would  relieve  the  insomnia 
for  the  time  completely. 

1 60 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF    SLEEP 

Foul  air  to  breathe  is  a  frequent  cause  of 
wakefulness ;  for  this,  the  remedy  is  fresh  air 
in  great  abundance ;  and  people  do  not  take 
cold  on  account  of  well-ventilated  bedrooms, 
even  draughty  ones.  I  know  the  current 
thought  of  the  world  is  against  this  statement, 
but  the  "  world  "  is  wrong — and  its  error  is 
killing  thousands  of  good  people  each  year, 
some  of  whom  ought  to  be  kept  alive,  for  they 
might  be  a  benefit  to  society. 

When  people  are  up  and  about  they  rarely 
become  sleepy  because  their  brains  are  tired. 
They  often  are  sleepy  when  up  and  about,  but 
this  is  mainly  due  to  fatigue  of  the  body,  or 
to  some  fault  of  the  digestive  organs.  Sleep 
comes  normally  with  a  normal  and  unabused 
body  that  has  been  fatigued  a  little  and  then 
put  to  rest ;  and  it  is  helped  by  cessation  of 
active  thinking,  by  darkness,  by  stillness,  by 
mental  tranquillity  and  a  happy  spirit.  These 
things  are  first  to  be  secured  if  possible ;  then 
the  sleep  comes  as  a  natural  consequence  and, 
with  hardly  an  exception,  in  sufficient  amount. 
The  sleep  is  secondary,  not  primary ;  these 
other  things  are  primary  and  of  surpassing 
importance. 

Nor  must  we  count  the  hours  of  our  slum- 
ber for  fear  it  is  not  enough  ;  that  would  break 
the  charm  of  the  influence  and  spoil  the  game. 

I6i 


THE   TRUE   GOSPEL   OF   SLEEP 

We  may  keep  a  record  if  we  like,  and  it  may 
be  useful  for  our  amusement,  and  to  help  de- 
termine the  exact  amount  of  sleep  that,  in 
our  social  zone,  is  physiologic  for  the  man, 
woman,  and  child  of  the  present  century,  with 
their  varying  orders  of  enlightenment  and 
manifold  grades  of  work  and  play.  Now  no 
man  can  tell  just  what  that  amount  of  sleep 
is ;  and  this  question  can  never  be  settled  by 
one  poor  slave  of  insomnia,  or  by  a  thousand 
of  them,  and  the  question  can  wait.  It  will 
profit  each  of  these  unfortunates  to  neg- 
lect the  race  interests  for  his  own,  and  to  put 
his  mind,  in  the  calmest  sincerity,  to  the  task 
of  saving  himself  from  his  thraldom — and  the 
task  need  not  be  hard  nor  its  benefits  un- 
certain. 


162 


_. 


Some    Unconceded    Rights    of 
Parents   and   Children 


Some    Unconceded    Rights    of 
Parents  and  Children 


It  would  appear  to  be  a  truism  that  parents 
and  their  own  children  are  of  all  people  best 
fitted  to  live  together  and  be  comforting-  and 
helpful  to  each  other.  And  probably  this  is 
the  rule;  but  there  are  exceptions  to  it.  The 
rule  means  the  average  folk  or  those  near 
the  average,  who  have  no  traits  or  habits  that 
mark  them  as  peculiar  or  abnormal,  and  whose 
bodies  are  symmetrical  and  undeformed,  for 
certain  deformities  of  the  body  go  with  men- 
tal eccentricities  almost  to  a  certainty.  The 
exceptions  to  the  rule  are  the  persons  who  have 
some  mental  or  bodily  deformity;  and  in  the 
aggregate  they  are  a  numerous  company.  A 
large  proportion  of  them  are  among  the  in- 
tellectual, refined,  and  forceful  people,  some  of 
whom  are  a  moving  influence  in  human  af- 
fairs. 

165 


SOME    UNCONCEDED    RIGHTS 

All  the  geniuses  of  every  sort  belong  to  this 
latter  class^  and  some  of  them  are  strong  and 
capable,  but  many  have  little  force  for  use- 
ful things.  While  their  peculiarities  are,  in 
a  few  cases,  endowments  for  power  in  some 
direction,  these  folks  are  all  more  or  less 
handicapped  in  the  struggles  of  life,  for  they 
lack  mental  steadiness  and  equilibrium.  They 
easily  tire,  often  have  unstable  purposes  and 
judgment.  They  are  a  class  whose  families 
are  usually  running  out,  and  giving  place  to 
the  more  strong,  tranquil,  and  evenly  balanced 
people  that  are  constantly  coming  up  from  the 
so-called  lower  orders  of  society.  Their  ranks 
are  perpetually  replenished  by  this  better 
stock ;  and  this,  touched  in  its  turn  by  the 
blight  of  our  tensive  civilization,  finally  goes 
to  the  wall  in  the  same  way.  Thus,  what  we 
wrongly  call  the  lower  strata  of  society  be- 
come the  race-saving  ones — they  are  the  better 
ones.  They  constantly  tend  to  rise  and  crowd 
the  others  out  of  existence;  so  there  is  a  con- 
tinuous mutation  going  on  among  the  orders 
of  society,  like  the  geologic  compounds  of  the 
earth's  crust.  There  is  no  problem  about  the 
plain,  tranquil  people ;  they  take  care  of  them- 
selves— or  the  fates  of  their  so-called  betters 
are  providing  for  them.  The  great  puzzle  is 
to  know  what  to  do  for  the  exceptional  ones, 

i66 


OF    PARENTS    AND    CHILDREN 

the  erratic  specimens  who  have  noble  qual- 
ities and  acute  misfortunes. 

These  erratic  people  often  irritate  each 
other,  even  parents  and  children,  and  unwit- 
tingly accentuate  each  other's  morbidness; 
without  bad  motives  they  often  cause  a  flood 
of  mutual  unhappiness.  They  are  all  lame 
in  some  direction,  and  for  that  reason,  if  for 
no  other,  they  are  entitled  to  the  largest  con- 
sideration and  all  the  helps  that  are  possible. 

Nearly  all  the  aberrations  I  have  indicated 
are  inborn  ;  they  could  hardly  come  into  exist- 
ence after  birth,  yet  in  many  cases  they  in- 
crease during  the  life  of  the  individual.  This 
increase  is  produced  by  the  influences  of  en- 
vironment, and  these  are  often  some  unappre- 
ciated force  or  set  of  forces  that  continue  a 
harmful  pressure  for  many  years.  Such  forces 
are  often  searched  for  and  seldom  found ;  in 
our  blundering  we  look  in  the  wrong  direc- 
tions for  them,  and  then  refuse  to  recognize 
them  when  they  are  found ;  many  of  the  most 
potent  of  them  are  unconceded,  and  so  little  or 
nothing  is  done  in  a  logical  way  to  counteract 
them. 

Some  of  the  defects  of  these  people  are  phys- 
ical, and  are  plainly  manifest  to  others.  They 
show  in  stature,  color,  complexion,  shape  of 
body,  and  features,  in  deformities  that  may  be 

167 


SOME   UNCONCEDED   RIGHTS 

annoying  to  the  eye,  like  unsymmetrical  ears 
or  eyes,  in  misshapen  faces  and  heads,  or  in 
a  general  lack  of  bodily  vigor.  The  victims 
are  only  too  well  aware  of  these  peculiarities, 
and  would  be  free  of  them  if  they  could ; 
everybody  would  be  symmetrical  and  beautiful 
of  body  if  it  were  in  his  power  to  be.  But 
only  the  lack  of  general  vigor  or  some  slight 
weakness  of  a  special  organ  can  be  helped 
much  by  any  exercise  or  education.  All  the 
rest  of  these  faults  are  fixed  and  will  last  till 
death.  These  we  must  bear,  with  such  phi- 
losophy as  we  have. 

The  most  important  defects  after  that  of  lack 
of  vigor  are  of  the  mind  and  nervous  system ; 
they  are  eccentricities  of  mind,  unusual  likes 
and  dislikes,  egoistic  tangents  and  emotional 
impulses.  These  tell  in  disposition  and  con- 
duct. They  are  temperamental,  and  fix  the 
place  of  the  individual  in  society ;  they  order 
his  happiness  or  misery,  and  measure  the  peace 
of  those  about  him ;  they  determine  his  career 
in  life,  his  success  in  business,  his  reputation 
among  people — even  the  manner  and  time  of 
his  death. 

The  most  hopeful  fact  about  this  class  of  de- 
fects is  that,  since  they  are  founded  in  the 
relative  degrees  of  development,  and  the  rela- 
tion of  the  functions  of  the  cerebral  cells,  they 

i68 


OF   PARENTS   AND    CHILDREN 

are  to  some  slight  degree  at  least,  correctible 
by  the  effect  of  education,  and  the  regulation 
of  mental  and  moral  influences,  especially 
when  these  influences  are  continued  through 
years  of  time.  A  long  nose  cannot  be  short- 
ened by  any  amount  of  cultivation ;  but  an  in- 
tense trait  of  mind  may  be  lessened  a  little  by 
long  enforced  disuse,  as  one  that  is  too  weak 
may  grow  somewhat  by  systematic  exercise 
long  continued. 

It  is  to  the  unspeakable  interest  of  these 
afflicted  ones  that  their  faults  of  mind  be 
first  correctly  diagnosed ;  that  their  causes  be 
found  out ;  and  then  that  the  right  correctives 
be  put  to  work  and  be  continued  as  long  as 
they  can  be  useful.  These  are  two  very  diffi- 
cult, often  impossible,  things  to  accomplish. 
Moreover,  the  task  is  apt  to  be  a  most  thank- 
less one;  the  victim  to  be  helped  is  likely  to 
object,  and  to  disbelieve  in  the  value  of  the 
corrective,  and  early  to  grow  tired  of  it,  and 
then  to  refuse  to  believe  in  its  good  effect 
when  it  comes.  For  this  reason,  as  well  as  on 
account  of  its  inherent  difficulties,  the  prob- 
lem is  one  that  strongly  appeals  to  every  spirit 
of  true  philanthropy. 

The  mental  traits  referred  to  are  numerous 
and  peculiar.  They  stamp  a  man  as  lacking 
much  or  little  in  general  mental  or  nervous 

169 


SOME    UNCONCEDED    RIGHTS 

balance.  He  is  perhaps  too  nervous  or  too 
lethargic,  too  smart  or  too  dull.  His  tastes 
are  too  acute  and  critical,  or  he  has  little  or 
no  critical  sense.  He  has  too  much  or  too  lit- 
tle candor  and  frankness.  His  egoism  is  large 
in  the  direction  of  covetousness  and  avarice 
or  of  jealousy  or  envy;  or  he  is  so  easy-going 
and  careless  of  himself  that  he  is  a  nearly  use- 
less member  of  society.  If  he  is  too  grasping 
he  may  become  a  cheat,  a  kleptomaniac,  or  a 
common  thief;  if  too  little  so  he  will  lack  in- 
dustry, be  lazy  and  easily  imposed  upon ;  will 
be  unable  to  accumulate  property,  but  will 
foolishly  give  it  away ;  he  will  have  an  unvig- 
orous  nature  and  may  end  in  the  poorhouse. 

If  his  tastes  are  extremely  esthetic  he  will 
have  intense  joy  in  artistic  things  and  habits, 
and  in  people  who  are  artistic  according  to  his 
standards.  But,  unless  he  is  a  philosopher, 
he  is  born  to  a  heritage  of  lifelong  carking 
at  the  blemishes  and  wrongs  that  are  all 
around  him ;  the  dirt  and  squalor,  and  the  un- 
fitness of  things.  If  his  tastes  are  too  dull  he 
will  tend  to  revert  toward  barbarism ;  he  may 
not  get  far  in  that  direction,  but  his  life  will 
be  a  heedless  and  lazy  one. 

All  such  warpings  work  for  social  demoral- 
ization, and  for  weakness  of  the  race  as  a 
whole;  never  for  the  general  balance  and  the 

170 


OF    PARENTS    AND    CHILDREN 

common  strength.  They  make  for  the  grief 
of  their  victims,  and  still  more  for  the  fatigue 
of  their  friends.  They  are  the  moral  casual- 
ties of  the  march  of  human  progress,  and  the 
gloom  of  their  affliction  can  be  lifted  only  a 
little  by  any  of  our  efforts  to  discover  and  cor- 
rect them. 

Nature  seems  always  to  be  trying  to  prevent 
such  defects,  and  to  keep  the  human  race  sym- 
metrical and  up  to  a  high  standard  of  power. 
But  the  efforts  often  miscarry,  and  so  the 
harm  comes,  and  after  the  children  are  born 
with  the  blight  upon  them  we  usually,  in  our 
blind  faith  in  the  infallibility  of  nature,  refuse 
or  fail  to  lift  a  finger  to  correct  them.  We 
hide  from  our  consciousness  the  very  exist- 
ence of  their  failings,  or,  if  we  discover  them, 
we  take  them  for  evidence  of  the  inscrutable 
workings  of  the  Almighty,  and  as  something 
that  cannot  be  helped.  Some  believe  it  is 
wicked  even  to  try  to  correct  them. 

The  abnormalities  that  I  have  described 
usually  come  to  the  children  by  reason  of  too 
great  likeness  in  mental  traits  of  the  parents 
or  grandparents.  And  nature  tries  to  prevent 
this  by  encouraging  marriage  between  persons 
of  positive  if  not  extreme  mental  and  physical 
unlikeness.  The  brunette  naturally  seeks  the 
blond ;  the  nervous  person  fancies  the  calm ; 

171 


SOME    UNCONCEDED   RIGHTS 

the  big  loves  the  petite ;  the  rude  seeks  the 
gentle;  strength  is  tender  toward  the  weak 
and  dependent ;  and  the  weak  lean  upon  the 
strong;  while  the  prejudice  against  marriages 
of  consanguinity  is  almost  universal.  But 
nature  blunders ;  she  is  often  foiled  by  propin- 
quity or  the  lack  of  it,  by  diffidence  and  hesi- 
tation on  the  part  of  young  people,  by  the 
often  benighted  bias  of  friends  and  others,  and 
especially  by  the  blindness  of  the  impulsive 
bundle  of  emotions  called  love.  Probably  not 
more  than  one  marriage  in  four  is  made  ac- 
cording to  the  natural  ideal  in  every  particular. 
The  other  three  are  more  or  less  of  a  com- 
promise which  one  or  both  the  parties  is  im- 
pelled by  various  circumstances  to  make. 

The  marriage  of  couples  having  like  traits 
in  excess  of  the  common  (and  the  word  trait 
always  implies  a  mental  quality  a  little  beyond 
the  average)  tends  to  greater  excess  of  similar 
traits  in  their  children,  and  so  down  the  years 
interminably.  Thus,  through  a  succession  of 
natal  faults,  to  which  mav  be  added  numerous 
after  influences,  we  have  the  neurotic,  the  in- 
tense, the  eccentric  and  the  dull — all  becom- 
ing, or  liable  to  become,  worse  rather  than 
better  through  succeeding  generations. 

These  unstable  tendencies  are  deplorable ;  in 
the  main  they  are  misfortunes  pure  and  sim- 

172 


OF   PARENTS   AND   CHILDREN 

pie.  Only  a  few  of  them,  and  far  between, 
come  to  be  useful  in  the  world ;  these  belong 
to  the  few  geniuses  whose  unusual  powers  in 
practical  ways  are  of  value  to  mankind;  but 
their  contributions  are  mostly  in  the  direction 
of  amusement,  rarely  in  the  realm  of  work. 
The  valuable  discoveries  of  the  geniuses  are 
usually  in  fields  where  numerous  students  have 
been  hunting  along  the  same  lines,  and  search- 
ing for  results  that  have  been  foreseen  by 
many  minds.  We  are  apt  to  call  great  that 
man  out  of  many  who  first  happens  to  find 
the  sought-for  thing.  But  his  superiority  to 
the  other  workers  in  his  field  is  usually  the  ac- 
cident of  getting  into  print  a  day  earlier  than 
the  rest. 

For  the  weal  of  the  individual  as  well  as  of 
society,  mental  balance  is  to  be  sought;  poise 
is  above  all  else  to  be  prayed  for ;  a  sane  sense 
of  proportion  is  the  goal.  The  child  who  is 
born  with  an  aberrant  tendency  has  a  natural 
right  to  every  influence  that  can  help  him  cor- 
rect it.  Beyond  his  right  to  the  four  prime 
necessities  of  physical  existence  (food,  shel- 
ter, clothes,  and  warmth),  he  has  no  greater 
claim  on  the  world  than  this.  He  demands, 
all  enlightened  people  demand,  a  fifth  favor 
in  life  made  up  of  education,  entertainment, 
and  pleasure ;  and  his  right  is  to  have  this  fifth 

173 


SOME    UNCONCEDED    RIGHTS 

boon  so  ordered  that  it  shall  increase  his  weak 
powers  and  repress  his  excessive  and  abnor- 
mal ones.  It  is  the  duty  of  everyone  respon- 
sible for  him,  as  it  is  his  own  duty,  to  aid  in 
this  consummation. 

It  is  a  safe  postulate  that  the  mentally 
warped  child  (not  the  mental  defect  as  we 
understand  imbecility,  w^hich  is  not  inherited, 
but  the  result  of  a  physical  accident)  has  one 
or  two  similarly  warped  parents  or  grand- 
parents, or  those  who  showed  similar  tenden- 
cies at  his  age.  That  is  the  reason  of  his 
warping;  his  and  their  aberrations  are  of  the 
same  general  character. 

It  is  equally  axiomatic  that  the  peculiarity 
that  has  descended  to  the  child  is  usually  in- 
creased by  living  with  people  having  the  same 
peculiarity,  whether  they  be  parents  or  other 
persons.  This  is  especially  true  of  nervous, 
erratic,  and  highly  sensitive  children  and  par- 
ents. The  quality  already  too  highly  wrought 
grows  worse  by  association  with  people  of  its 
kind.  It  is  logical  to  suppose  that,  living  with 
people  of  opposite  tendencies,  the  excessive 
traits  would  decrease  to  some  degree ;  cer- 
tainly they  would  be  less  likely  to  grow,  and 
this  is  the  way  it  works  in  actual  practice,  A 
phlegmatic  child  may  be  helped  to  a  normal 
basis  by  alert  and  nervous  associates,  but  a 

1/4 


OF    PARENTS    AND    CHILDREN 

nervous  child  never.  An  egoistic  and  fiction- 
building  child  will  be  helped  by  playmates 
who  are  simple  in  their  ways  and  literal  in 
the  truth  telling — seldom  by  one  of  his  own 
kind. 

Parents  with  like  traits  are  made  worse  and 
often  tired  out  by  the  nervous  and  wearing 
ways  of  their  children.  The  same  excessive 
qualities  grow  more  acute  and  rasping  in  each, 
the  longer  they  live  together.  Of  the  two,  the 
nervous  and  emotional  parents  are  hurt  most, 
for  they  have  their  normal  solicitude  for  the 
children  added  to  the  nagging  they  endure 
from  them.  The  children,  because  of  their  in- 
herited emotionalism,  often  take  advantage  of 
the  parents,  and  become  selfish  and  unapprecia- 
tive,  and  demand  all  manner  of  attention  and 
favors,  which  they  often  get,  and  in  the  get- 
ting become  more  abnormal. 

By  an  apparent  paradox  it  happens  that 
when  the  parent  does  much  for  the  child  the 
latter  grows  dependent  and  selfish,  and  comes 
to  demand  more  and  more;  whereas,  if  the 
parent  is  selfish  and  demands  much  of  the 
child,  the  latter  often  learns  to  give  much,  and 
grows  unselfish,  loving,  and  thoughtful — the 
divinest  nature  of  all  the  race.  This  is  a 
strange  comment  on  our  ideals  of  domestic 
life;  and  it  is  no  paradox,  but  just  what  we 

175 


SOME    UNCONCEDED    RIGHTS 

might  expect  to  occur  in  a  large  proportion  of 
cases. 

Erratic  parents  and  children  are  usually 
mental  and  moral  misfits.  They  are  poorly 
prepared  to  help  each  other,  and  amazingly 
endowed  to  do  each  other  harm.  The  harm 
to  the  children  is  almost  endless,  for  it  may 
go  down  to  other  generations ;  the  injury  to 
the  parents — ^beyond  the  harm  it  works  on 
their  own  children — may  end  with  their  own 
lives.  Such  children  and  parents  ought  not 
to  be  together  much,  they  ought  to  live  apart, 
at  least  during  the  developing  time  of  the  chil- 
dren's lives,  and  any  power  that  can  bring  this 
about,  whether  it  be  an  ordered  purpose  or 
any  of  the  accidents  of  fate,  is  a  boon  to  both 
parties.  Even  death  itself  may  come  to  save 
from  ruin  the  surviving  party ;  for  a  life 
dragged  out  as  a  nervous  wreck,  or  lived  as  a 
discredit  to  itself,  is  worse  than  death. 

The  erratic  children  who  have  erratic  par- 
ents ought  to  be  put  into  families  free  from 
influences  that  can  increase  their  bad  habits; 
the  nervous  children  into  tranquil  families,  and 
vice  versa,  so  that  the  parents  as  well  as  the 
children  may  be  helped.  By  this  plan  the 
errors  of  inheritance  would  be  in  part  cor- 
rected ;  the  overgrown  disagreeable  qualities 
would  be  repressed,  or,   from  disuse,  would 

176 


OF    PARENTS    AND   CHILDREN 

escape  excessive  growth ;  and  the  dormant, 
the  dwarfed,  and  undeveloped  ones  might 
grow  and  be  useful  in  the  world's  business. 
The  small  children  usually  do  better  in  fam- 
ilies, but  the  older  ones  are  well  enough  off 
in  any  good  boarding  school.  A  long  visit 
away  from  home  and  among  friends  or  rela- 
tives who  will  not  be  foolishly  indulgent  often 
starts  a  good  tendency  of  mind  and  soul  that 
lasts  through  life. 

Tired-out  parents  with  prostrate  nervous 
powers  often  find  it  needful  to  send  their  boys 
and  girls  away  to  boarding  schools  to  get  rid 
of  the  care  and  worry  of  them.  It  is  the  sal- 
vation of  many  parents,  who  otherwise  might 
be  nervously  ruined.  It  helps  many  mothers 
to  recover  from  neurasthenia,  and  it  is  usually 
a  benefit  to  the  children ;  for  such  a  mother  has 
ceased  to  be  valuable  to  her  child,  and  daily 
grows  worse  by  trying  to  care  for  it.  It  is  a 
nervous  child's  moral  right,  as  it  ought  to  be 
his  legal  right,  to  live  among  tranquil,  sanely 
tranquil,  people.  The  nervous  and  over- 
wrought children  are  benefited  by  going  away 
from  their  overwrought  parents.  Living  to- 
gether they  nag  and  irritate  each  other  and 
both  grow  worse.  The  personal  influences 
which  the  children  find  in  the  new  environ- 
ment rub  against  them  in  a  fresh  and  usually 

177 


SOME   UNCONCEDED   RIGHTS 

an  agreeable  fashion  and  so  soothe  their  irrita- 
tion. It  benefits  them  also  to  be  among 
strangers,  where  they  often  rise  to  the  best 
aspirations  and  conduct  that  they  are  capable 
of;  they  start  there  a  new  life  guided  by  mo- 
tives that  to  many  may  be  wholly  novel ;  they 
become  more  tranquil  and  self-controlled,  less 
cantankerous,  more  considerate  of  the  feel- 
ings and  interests  of  others,  less  selfish.  The 
new  life  is  an  inspiration  to  them ;  new  ideals 
spring  up,  and  better  emotions  come  to  be  the 
guiding  force  within  them. 

Nervous  and  erratic  people  of  all  ages, 
when  living  together,  tend  toward  oikiomania. 
They  are  irritated  by  the  presence  of  their 
own  people,  and  annoyed  by  each  other's  ways 
and  habits  and  talk — that  is  what  oikiomania 
means.  This  tendency  is  greater  if  the  family 
is  small  and  the  members  must  pay  much  at- 
tention to  each  other;  that  is,  if  the  personal 
factors  in  the  family  are  few.  Strangers  and 
people  outside  their  own  households  have  a 
personal  eflfect  to  counteract  this  tendency, 
and  living  with  them  may  cure  it  entirely. 
This  is  a  well-known  truth,  and  it  explains 
much  of  the  benefit  that  comes  to  these  handi- 
capped children  when  they  go  away  from 
home  to  school  or  to  live  in  other  families.  It 
is  an  argument  in  favor  of  a  cosmopolitan  life 

178 


OF   PARENTS    AND    CHILDREN 

begun  early  in  the  child's  career.  The  unfor- 
tunate child  has  a  moral  right  to  be  placed  in 
an  environment  that  will  put  at  rest,  as  far  as 
is  possible,  his  vicious  tendency  and  his  pecul- 
iar irritability,  as  well  as  in  one  that  will  stim- 
ulate those  needful  qualities  of  mind  that  are 
sluggish  and  poorly  developed.  And  this  is 
always,  to  some  extent  at  least,  a  new  environ- 
ment ;  but  it  is  not  one  that  means  consent  to 
laziness  or  shirking  of  duties  or  the  humor- 
ing of  unworthy  ambitions  or  whims. 

While  children  have  the  natural  right  to 
grow  up  under  conditions  that  will  contribute 
to  their  most  symmetrical  development,  even 
if  it  is  away  from  their  natural  protectors,  so 
parents  have  certain  natural  rights  as  to  their 
children,  and  one  of  these  is  the  right  not  to 
be  crazed  by  them.  If  they  feed,  clothe,  warm, 
shelter,  protect,  and  educate  their  children, 
that  is  enough,  unless  more  can  be  done  with 
mutual  benefit.  To  give  also  their  own  peace 
of  mind  and  even  sanity  is  too  large  a  gift, 
and  it  is  not  required.  It  is  especially  not 
called  for,  since,  when  the  parent  is  distracted 
by  the  child,  the  latter  is  sure  to  be  tempera- 
mentally poisoned  and  more  likely  ruined  by 
the  parent's  condition.  What  protects  the  par- 
ent benefits  the  child  even  more. 

A  parent  has  no  right  to  show  his  low  ideals, 

179 


SOME    UNCONCEDED   RIGHTS 

if  he  has  such,  to  his  child.  And  children 
usually  find  out  what  sort  of  purposes  their 
parents  have,  even  if  they  try  to  hide  them. 
It  is  a  rare  man  who  can  always  hide  his 
base  purposes  from  his  child;  he  is  sure  to 
forget  some  day  and  blunder  into  a  revela- 
tion that  the  child  will  see  through  in  an  in- 
stant. I  once  saw  a  man  step  up  to  the  box 
office  of  a  show  with  his  son  and  ask  what  a 
ticket  would  cost  for  a  nine-year-old  boy. 
"  Ten  years,  papa,"  said  the  boy  in  a  low  tone. 
And  when  his  father  did  not  correct  it  he 
shouted  with  evident  conscience :  "  Ten  years, 
papa ! "  The  father  was  trying  to  get  a 
cheaper  ticket  by  means  of  a  cheap  decep- 
tion, and  evidently  had  not  posted  the  boy. 
The  latter  thought  his  father  had  made  a  mis- 
take— later  he  must  have  divined,  to  his  own 
degradation  of  soul,  that  it  was  a  very  small 
cheat.  Few  child  memories  can  be  more  pre- 
cious to  a  man  than  those  of  the  high  ideals 
and  frank  honesty  of  his  parents. 

The  contentions  of  this  paper  would  be 
sure,  some  of  them,  to  meet  with  doubt  and 
denial  from  most  of  the  inmates  of  tranquil 
and  unperturbed  households;  for  most  good 
people  believe  laudably  in  the  home  life  for 
children,  as  I  do ;  and  they  usually  think  it  im- 
possible (as  I  do  not)  that  such  a  life,  ani- 

i8o 


OF   PARENTS    AND   CHILDREN 

mated  by  the  good  intentions  of  all  concerned, 
can  ever  work  badly  for  children  or  parents. 
They  are  ready  to  demand  that  children  of 
susceptible  ages  shall  be  taken  away  from  in- 
temperate, cruel,  and  immoral  parents.  Some 
would  even  take  them  away  from  irreligious 
ones.  But  that  well-meaning  children  may  be 
taken  away  from  parents  of  the  highest  order 
of  good  morals  and  the  most  superb  parental 
devotion — and  with  benefit  to  both — seems  so 
absurd  to  them  that  they  find  it  difficult  to  treat 
the  proposition  seriously.  Yet,  if  they  will 
look  about  them  with  their  eyes  wide  open, 
and  if  they  will  study  the  personal  history  of 
their  own  times  a  little,  they  will  find  hun- 
dreds of  cases  where,  on  one  pretext  or  an- 
other, this  very  thing  has  been  done.  The  rea- 
son given  in  a  particular  case  may  be  the 
invalidism  of  the  mother,  or  some  theory  of 
the  father,  or  the  irritation  from  contact  with 
other  children ;  or  the  boy  or  girl  has  begged 
to  go  away  to  school  or  to  go  off  on  a  visit, 
and  has  been  gratified;  or  the  boy  has  run 
away  from  home  and  after  roaming  awhile 
has  come  back,  and  then  been  sent  away  from 
home  or  to  work — or,  what  is  often  the  case, 
the  nervous  skeleton  in  the  family  has  been 
kept  hidden  from  all  but  intimates  of  the 
household,  and  some  other  and  factitious  ex- 

i8i 


SOME    UNCONCEDED    RIGHTS 

cuse  has  been  given  for  the  child's  going  away 
into  new  influences. 

Every  such  instance  is  an  argument  in  favor 
of  the  claims  here  made,  as  it  is  a  plea  for  a 
frank  study  of  this  whole  subject  without 
blinking  the  facts.  The  trouble  with  the  ob- 
jectors is  that  they  unconsciously  feel  bound 
to  make  the  facts  harmonize  with  their  the- 
ories, which  is  wrong.  Theories,  to  be  good, 
must  grow  out  of  the  facts,  and  there  can  be 
no  more  impropriety  in  studying  this  subject 
scientifically  than  there  is  in  thus  dealing  with 
indigestion  or  headache.  The  wrong  comes 
if  our  study  is  disloyal  to  the  best  interests  of 
child  or  parent  or  the  community  as  a  whole ; 
and  loyalty  to  child  and  parent  can  never  be 
disloyalty  to  society. 

Enlightened  communities  have  had  to  come 
to  several  new  notions  in  the  care  of  the 
mentally  unfortunate ;  they  will  come  to  the 
ground  here  contended  for,  or  something  akin 
to  it,  after  they  get  over  the  shock  of  its  ap- 
parent absurdity.  (They  now  often  act  upon 
it,  but  refuse  to  confess  that  they  do.)  The 
change  will  probably  come  slowly — ^but  it  will 
come,  as  sure  as  fate,  or  we  shall  outgrow  the 
necessity  for  it.  And  the  necessity  for  it  lies 
in  our  highly  wrought  and  extremely  artificial 
lives.     For  a  full  century  in  this  country  our 

182 


OF    PARENTS    AND    CHILDREN 

lives  have  been  growing  more  artificial  and  in- 
volved rather  than  less  so,  with  only  occasional 
evidences  of  a  tendency  to  return  to  more  nor- 
mal and  simple  ways. 

Among  the  most  hopeful  recent  symptoms 
in  this  direction  are  the  fashion  of  athletics 
among  the  youth  of  the  land  during  the  last 
two  decades,  and  the  later  and  growing  cult 
for  outdoor  life  and  more  house  ventilation. 
These  influences  tend  toward  physical  vigor 
and  the  worship  of  it,  and  so  are  helpful  in  a 
high  degree. 

There  was  a  time  when  it  was  thought  to  be 
a  cruelty  to  the  insane  to  take  them  away  from 
their  homes  and  friends.  Now  every  in- 
formed person  knows  the  absurdity  of  that 
idea.  The  insane  of  every  degree  are  always 
benefited  by  life  among  strangers.  There  is 
substantially  no  exception  to  this  rule.  In 
former  times  the  families  of  these  unfor- 
tunates, usually  with  the  best  intentions,  treat- 
ed them  in  the  way  that  harmed  them  most. 
There  probably  is  not  in  all  the  history  of 
mankind  a  more  pathetic  example  than  this, 
of  personal  devotion  doing  injury  to  the  ob- 
ject of  its  care.  A  near  approach  to  it,  how- 
ever, is  our  mistreatment  of  some  of  the  most 
deserving  of  our  children. 

Mentally    aberrant    children    and    parents, 

183 


SOME    UNCONCEDED   RIGHTS 

leagues  this  side  of  true  insanity  as  it  is  un- 
derstood, but  peculiar,  erratic,  and  often  in- 
tense and  nervously  prostrate,  are  subject  to 
the  same  laws  of  cause  and  cure  as  the  really 
insane  are.  And  they  stand  as  much  in  need 
of  an  enlightened  love  that  will  do  the  best 
things  for  them,  even  if  at  first  blush  they 
seem  to  be  unnatural  things. 

The  claim  of  parents  that  they  cannot  spare 
their  children,  that  it  is  the  parent's  place  to 
take  care  of  his  children  and  keep  them,  is 
good  enough  for  the  normal,  wholesome  peo- 
ple who  are  unharmed  by  too  much  civiliza- 
tion, or  by  generations  of  intense  competition. 
It  is  a  very  bad  claim  for  the  warped,  abnor- 
mal people  who  are  victims  of  our  artificial 
and  intense  ways  of  living  and  working. 

For  a  parent  to  say  that  he  cannot  spare 
his  child  out  of  his  sight,  even  for  the  child's 
good,  is  to  plead  guilty  to  a  love  that  is  almost 
purely  selfish ;  and  that  is  a  terrible  confes- 
sion to  make.  Some  of  the  very  people  who 
make  this  plaint  see  their  children  but  a  small 
portion  of  the  time;  most  of  their  waking 
hours  the  children  spend  in  school,  with  other 
children,  and  in  the  care  of  nurses  and  tutors, 
often  to  their  considerable  benefit;  rarely  to 
their  harm.  A  father  or  mother  with  a  strong 
tendency    to    parental    indulgence,    or    with 

184 


OF    PARENTS   AND    CHILDREN 

marked  irritability,  is  less  safe  as  a  child's 
care-taker  than  the  good  teacher  or  nurse. 
The  teacher  and  the  nurse  are  more  likely  to  be 
discreetly  kind  and  helpful.  And  it  is  the  nat- 
ural right  of  every  child  to  have  from  its  care- 
takers that  order  of  kindness  that  is  discreet 
and  truly  helpful;  for  that  is  the  sort  that 
works  for  its  lifelong,  possibly  its  eternity- 
long,  benefit,  even  if  it  violates  some  selfish 
theories  and  causes  some  evanescent  heart- 
aches. The  best  friend  of  the  child  is  that  one 
who  will  most  help  him  to  a  normal  and  fine 
development  of  himself,  and  to  a  wholesome 
and  symmetrical  career  in  life.  And  that 
friend  most  deserves  his  thanks,  whether  it 
be  his  father,  his  mother,  or  his  neighbor. 


185 


The  Trained  Nurse  and  the 
Larger   Life 


The  Trained  Nurse  and  the 
Larger  Life 


A   Graduation  Address 

In  making  a  formal  address  on  an  occasion 
like  this,  there  is  something  of  a  temptation 
to  indulge  in  the  common  platitudes;  to  glo- 
rify the  nurse's  calling ;  to  enlarge  on  the  fact 
that  this  is  a  great  epoch  in  the  lives  of  the 
graduates ;  to  romance  a  little  on  the  very 
proper  theory  that  they  are  destined,  in  the 
practice  of  their  profession,  to  bring  joy  into 
the  lives  of  unnumbered  sick  folks  and 
through  them  into  numberless  other  lives ;  that 
they  have  a  true  missionary  work  before  them, 
and  that  they  are,  by  their  character  and  de- 
meanor, sure  to  uphold  the  standard  of  their 
guild  and  to  bring  honor  to  their  alma  mater. 
The  list  of  beautiful  and  sweet  things  of  this 
kind  that  might  be  said,  and  said  with  the 
utmost  propriety,  could  be  much  prolonged. 

189 


THE   TRAINED    NURSE 

They  are  pleasant  things  to  say  and  to  hear, 
and  they  might  be  said  to-night  ungrudgingly 
and  with  perfect  truth. 

But  these  are  the  superficial  and  more  ob- 
vious things  to  say ;  they  voice  the  first  im- 
pressions of  a  graduation-day  ceremonial,  and 
they  are  always  proper  and  in  good  form. 
Moreover,  they  are  easy  things  to  say.  A 
deeper  and  more  philosophic  view,  however, 
prompts  a  lot  of  questions,  and  sees  other  and 
maybe  larger  meanings. 

Notwithstanding  recent  history,  this  kind 
of  an  occasion  is  relatively  novel ;  twenty-five 
years  ago  it  would  have  been  almost  unique; 
fifty  years  ago  it  would  have  been  impossible. 
It  marks  the  development  of  a  new  order  of 
things  for  women  and  men,  as  well  as  society 
in  general ;  a  step  in  a  real  social  emancipation 
of  our  kind.  Such  an  event  as  this  would 
have  startled  our  grandmothers.  They  were 
debarred  from  all  schools  of  higher  education ; 
and  there  were  no  schools  of  any  professional 
equipment  for  them ;  they  were  well  fettered 
to  tradition.  The  idea  that  in  the  stress 
of  sickness  and  accident  people  should  be 
nursed  as  well  as  operated  upon  and  prescribed 
for  by  trained  experts,  was  in  their  day  only 
just  beginning  to  be  discussed.  Now  it  seems 
the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world,  and  we 

190 


AND   THE    LARGER   LIFE 

wonder  it  was  not  discovered  before.  It  has 
lowered  the  death  rate  of  cities,  and  it  is  one 
of  the  few  epoch-making  improvements  in  the 
struggle  against  death  and  suffering  that  were 
initiated  in  the  nineteenth  century.  The  pub- 
lic has  come  slowly  to  realize  the  value  of 
trained  nurses,  and  now  insists  on  having 
them.  Such  innovations  develop  in  a  quarter 
of  a  century  that  we  are  apt  to  forget  what 
things  are  wholly  modern  and  what  old. 

And  the  nurses  improve.  As  a  profession 
they  have  taken  on  dignity.  They  are,  to  be- 
gin with,  a  selected  company.  From  the  day 
a  girl  first  inclines  to  be  a  trained  nurse  she 
becomes  the  subject  of  a  process  of  pruning 
and  elimination.  She  has  less  than  fifty  per 
cent  of  certainty  to  be  admitted  to  a  first-class 
school ;  and  once  admitted  she  has  a  large  per- 
centage of  certainty  to  drop  out  before  her 
graduation.  If  she  is  graduated  she  may  fail 
in  the  most  delicate  art  extant — one  that  no 
training  school  can  teach  her  completely — 
the  art  of  adapting  herself  to  the  public  and 
to  the  units  of  society,  for  her  and  their  good. 
Truly,  the  graduate  trained  nurse  has  reason 
to  be  proud,  especially  if  her  degree  comes 
from  a  school  of  exacting  requirements. 

Who  would  have  thought  twenty  years  ago 
that  a  school  for  the  education  of  women  to 

191 


THE   TRAINED   NURSE 

nurse  the  sick  could  ever  become  a  department 
of  a  university?  Yet  this  wonder  is  fore- 
shadowed by  developing  events  now  going  on, 
and  is  likely  some  day  to  be  realized. 

Some  training  schools  now  require  a  high- 
school  certificate  for  admission  to  their  classes, 
and  they  put  a  premium  on  previous  college 
work.  It  has  befallen  that  at  least  some  of  the 
sick  need,  in  their  nurses,  culture  as  well  as 
neatness  and  refinement ;  and  that  elevating 
companionship  and  power  to  instruct  and  en- 
tertain in  a  fine  way,  are  often  a  potent  force 
for  recovery,  when  brought  to  the  bedside  by 
a  fine  woman  not  of  the  patient's  own  family. 
Then  it  is  elevating  to  a  patient  to  have  a 
nurse  who  is  his  mental  and  moral  superior, 
without  assuming  to  be.  He  cannot  belittle 
her,  and  she  may  and  often  does  elevate  him. 

These  high-standard  training  schools  have 
made  another  discovery,  namely,  that  a  good 
preliminary  education  creates  for  a  girl  a  poise 
and  woman's  self-control  (and  therefore 
safety  as  a  pupil  in  training)  at  least  three 
years  earlier  in  life  than  these  qualities  could 
be  sure  to  come  solely  by  the  march  of  time. 
It  is  usually  absurd  to  keep  an  academic  grad- 
uate in  moral  quarantine  for  a  score  of  moons, 
meditating  on  her  well-earned  diploma,  till  her 
twenty-three  years  have  caught  up  with  her 

192 


AND   THE    LARGER    LIFE 

attainments,  before  she  can  enter  a  training 
school  of  the  right  sort.  The  age  condition 
of  entrance  to  the  older  schools  is  probably 
justifiable,  considering  the  grade  of  pupils 
which  their  low  educational  conditions  are  lia- 
ble to  bring  them,  for  at  all  costs  there  must 
be  some  maturity  of  viewpoint  and  personal 
reliability  in  every  pupil,  and  twenty-three 
will  usually  bring  these.  But  real  education 
hastens  them,  crowds  them  into  the  earlier 
years,  and  develops  maturity.  It  helps  to  wis- 
dom, if  it  does  not  create  it. 

There  is  another  phase  of  this  subject 
that  is  of  surpassing  interest.  The  training 
schools  are  both  a  cause  and  an  evidence  of 
certain  great  changes  in  the  estimate  of  all 
classes  of  people,  as  to  the  place  of  the  true 
woman  in  society,  and  as  to  what  the  true 
woman  really  is.  These  shiftings  affect 
women  more  than  men,  but  only  a  little  more, 
for  the  new  masculine  estimate  of  women  con- 
stitutes nearly,  if  not  quite,  half  of  the  move- 
ment. And  the  movement  has  been  a  steady, 
slow,  pervading  increase  in  the  opportunities 
to  women  to  do  things,  and  in  the  belief  of  the 
world  in  their  larger  rights  and  powers  to  do 
things. 

The  trained  nurses  are  an  evidence  of  the 
change,  for  without  some  amelioration  of  the 

193 


THE   TRAINED   NURSE 

former  severe  popular  standards  the  nurses 
never  could  have  entered  to  the  degree  they 
have  into  the  good  opinion  and  the  service  of 
the  public.  And  no  one  who  has  watched 
their  successful  work  and  the  maintenance  of 
their  position — sometimes  in  the  face  of  grave 
obstacles  —  can  doubt  that  they  have  also 
helped  to  produce  the  change. 

Time  was,  in  this  country,  and  not  so  very 
long  ago,  when  woman  was  vastly  more  re- 
stricted in  her  social  and  legal  rights  and  in 
her  activities  than  she  is  now.  This  is  fa- 
miliar, almost  contemporaneous,  history.  Then 
she  was  under  the  constant  protection  of  the 
male  members  of  her  family.  She  was  chape- 
roned, hidden,  metaphorically  veiled,  and  pro- 
tected— she  was  unable  to  protect  herself.  Her 
fields  of  activity  were  few,  and  in  these  she 
was  expected  to  be  active,  especially  if  they 
were  in  the  sphere  of  hard  work.  But  some- 
times, then  as  now,  her  sphere  was  to  be  idle 
and  ornamental,  and  she  was  relatively  igno- 
rant of  the  essential  facts  of  the  commoner 
knowledge  of  the  world.  Any  attempt  to  en- 
large her  scope  was  a  suggestion  of  some 
defection  in  her  character.  Even  to  try  to  be- 
come greatly  educated  was  mannish  —  fla- 
grantly so,  if  she  would  fill  her  head  with  the 
facts  of  the  world,  like  animal  physiology  and 

194 


AND   THE    LARGER    LIFE 

pathology.  By  the  previous  standards  women 
must  be  ignorant,  like  the  slaves  of  old,  with 
the  difference  that  the  women  must  be  chap- 
eroned. A  woman  was  held  not  to  need  much 
education,  and  much  education  was  thought 
to  lessen  her  charms.  And  what  education 
soever  she  had  must  be  as  ethereal  and  orna- 
mental as  possible.  Less  than  twenty  years 
ago  a  course  in  domestic  science  was  intro- 
duced into  the  curriculum  of  an  academy  for 
girls  in  New  England,  and  was  condemned  as 
a  sacrilege  by  numerous  critics,  not  a  few  of 
whom  were  educators  themselves.  They  said 
it  would  degrade  and  belittle  the  noble  thing 
called  woman's  education. 

Some  of  these  old  prejudices  still  linger 
even  with  us,  and  promise  to  linger  long.  In 
our  marriage  ceremonies,  for  example,  the 
bride  is  often  "  given  away,"  a  relic  of  the 
time  when  she  was  given  away  indeed,  with  or 
without  her  consent,  as  is  still  the  case  in  the 
Orient. 

Innocency  was  of  old  the  highest  attribute 
of  excellence  of  woman,  especially  of  a  young 
woman — as  it  must  continue  to  be  forever. 
But  the  old  doctrine  made  it  synonymous  with 
ignorance,  and  to  that  this  latter-day  awaken- 
ing demurs,  and  says  that  to  be  innocent  of 
wrong  is  not  necessarily  to  be  kept  in  ignor- 

195 


THE    TRAINED    NURSE 

ance  of  any  truth  of  nature — ^but  that  the 
truths  of  the  universe  help  rather  than  hin- 
der in  that  kind  of  rectitude  that  constitutes 
a  real  virtue  and  a  character  worth  having. 

Even  now,  after  we  have  conceded  more  re- 
sponsibility as  well  as  liberty  to  woman,  we 
often  pretend  to  ourselves  that  she  is  still  ig- 
norant, as  though  that  might  in  some  way 
make  us  more  sure  of  her  immaculateness. 
Many  of  our  customs  still  testify  to  this  de- 
ception, and  we  cling  to  certain  of  them  with 
great  tenacity,  and  in  utter  disregard  of  their 
relative  usefulness.  If  it  is  proposed  that  a 
social  restriction  or  custom  of  women  shall 
be  made  less  severe,  the  more  timid  of  our 
monitors  of  ethics  are  liable  to  hold  up  their 
hands  in  horror  and  declare  that  the  foun- 
dations of  social  order  are  in  peril. 

An  absurd  incident  in  point  occurred  in 
rural  New  England  during  the  early  decades 
of  the  last  century.  It  was  given  me  by  my 
mother,  of  sacred  memory,  and  occurred  in 
her  own  girlhood  observation.  A  woman  in 
her  town  adopted  a  new  fashion,  then  just 
being  heard  of  as  coming  into  vogue  in  the 
cities,  and  was  at  once  pounced  upon  by  most 
of  the  neighboring  women  for  having  done 
something  which  they  thought  was  out  of 
character.     She  was  scorned  as  much  as  one 

196 


AND   THE    LARGER    LIFE 

of  these  trained  nurses  would  be  should  she 
walk  a  public  street  in  daylight  smoking  a 
cigar.  It  was  my  grandmother  who,  in  her 
independent  sense  of  justice,  and  to  show  her 
contempt  for  the  ungenerous  criticism,  pro- 
ceeded straightway  to  adopt  the  fashion  her- 
self. 

What  was  the  fashion?  It  was  proper  by 
every  criterion  save  that  of  its  novelty,  and 
it  was  in  the  highest  sense  hygienic  and  com- 
fortable. We  can  smile  at  the  mixture  of  con- 
servatism and  prudery  with  which  the  neigh- 
bors felt  outraged,  and  declare  that  such 
foolish  judgments  shall  never  enter  into  our 
estimate  of  the  conduct  of  others ;  but  it  was 
unavoidable  to  them,  and  we  are  not  wholly 
free  from  danger  of  similar  blunders.  The 
fashion  that  shocked  those  prim  dames  was 
the  wearing  of  drawers  by  women.  This  gar- 
ment, it  seems,  had  never  been  worn  before 
by  any  woman  of  that  section  of  the  country, 
and  the  innovation  was  a  shock.  In  a  year 
or  two  the  fashion  had  very  properly  spread 
to  nearly  every  household  in  the  community. 
The  women  came  to  their  senses. 

This  episode  shows  in  a  grotesque  way  how 
foolish  the  human  genus  can  be ;  how  it  may 
act  without  really  thinking.  This  first  inno- 
vating woman  was  taunted  with  not  only  wear- 

197 


THE    TRAINED   NURSE 

ing  the  garments  of  men,  but  with  having  de- 
signs on  the  vocations  and  prerogatives  of 
men  as  well,  and  with  being  immodest.  And 
I  should  like  to  be  sure  that  no  person  in  this 
audience  is  this  moment  censuring  me  for  bad 
taste  in  having  related  this  incident.  I  wish 
I  knew  that  all  of  us  had  put  away  most  of  our 
prudery. 

The  trained  nurse,  like  the  college  woman 
graduate,  has  helped  to  a  public  avowal  that 
women  may  acquire  any  and  all  knowledge, 
and  indulge  in  numerous  physical  and  social 
activities,  and  not  be  coarsened  by  them. 
There  is  a  wholesome  and  a  growing  class  of 
the  better  people  who  refuse  to  see  in  waspish 
waists,  untanned  faces,  mental  insipidity,  and 
general  uselessness,  the  marks  of  the  admi- 
rable in  womanhood.  They  see  the  admirable 
rather  in  outdoor  color,  good  muscles,  capac- 
ity to  do  things,  knowledge  and  courage  to 
inquire,  a  sane  independence,  self-respect  and 
good  fellowship.  These  are  coming  to  be 
reckoned  among  the  marks  of  character  and 
worth ;  and  the  career  of  the  trained  nurse  has 
helped  to  cultivate  the  better  public  opinion. 
With  her,  to  be  sensible  has  come  to  be  fash- 
ionable ;  the  people  have  learned  to  regard  her 
as  incapable  of  the  commoner  forms  of  femi- 
nine nonsense.    Fancy,  if  you  can,  a  graduate 

198 


AND   THE    LARGER    LIFE 

of  a  first-class  training  school  or  of  a  univer- 
sity wearing  a  tight  corset  or  foolish  shoes 
or  gloves,  or  powdering  away  the  rich  tan 
color  of  her  face ;  or  simpering. 

I  think  this  very  reputation  for  wholesome- 
ness  is  one  of  the  incentives  that  cause  many 
young  women  to  enter  training  schools.  Who, 
in  selecting  a  course  of  education,  would  not 
be  glad  to  find  that  one  which  would  take  him 
for  life  into  a  company  respected  for  its  voca- 
tion, and  honored  in  the  community?  We 
join  secret  orders  and  strive  to  get  into  coveted 
social  sets  for  similar  reasons. 

No  student  of  sociology  can  doubt  that  the 
changes  here  referred  to  have  benefited  the 
community  as  a  whole.  They  are  especially 
of  value  to  men  by  enhancing  the  man's  es- 
timate of  the  true  woman,  and  enlarging  his 
belief  in  her  capacity  and  powers ;  and  these 
changes  have  come  about  in  no  small  degree 
because  men  have  been  cared  for  by  trained 
nurses.  The  man  as  a  patient  may  have 
been  rather  startled  at  first  at  the  idea  of 
a  young  nurse  taking  charge  of  him  and 
administering  to  his  every  want  for  restora- 
tion to  health.  But  the  experience  has  usually 
ended  by  his  having  a  higher  opinion  of  the 
worth  of  the  real  woman.  This  influence  has 
been  a  useful  leaven  that  has  worked  power- 

199 


THE   TRAINED    NURSE 

fully;  and  no  one  can  know  of  the  value  of 
this  force  so  well  as  a  physician  who  is  for- 
tunate enough  to  have  seen  the  old  regime 
changed  to  the  new,  and  to  have  practiced 
under  both.  Having  had  that  experience,  such 
an  one  knows  the  facts,  for  the  facts  are 
patent  to  all  the  seniors  in  the  profession  with 
a  general  metropolitan  practice. 

Another  influence  for  the  betterment  of  the 
standing  of  the  graduate  nurse,  and  through 
her  of  womankind  everywhere,  is  the  admi- 
rable character  which,  with  hardly  an  excep- 
tion, these  nurses  have  maintained.  I  venture 
to  say  that  the  graduates  of  no  college  for 
women  have  a  record  for  probity,  efficiency, 
kindliness,  and  general  woman's  character  su- 
perior to  that  of  the  graduates  of  the  high- 
class  training  schools  for  nurses  in  this  coun- 
try. These  graduates  have  demonstrated, 
what  even  women  critics  themselves  do  not 
doubt,  that  a  young  woman  may  be  trusted  to 
her  own  chaperonage  without  a  breath  of  sus- 
picion from  anybody.  And  that  is  an  achieve- 
ment that  marks  an  epoch. 

To  what  is  this  consummation  probably  due  ? 
Undoubtedly  in  large  measure  to  the  rigid  se- 
lection of  the  personnel  of  the  student  body  of 
the  training  schools.  If  superior  women  are 
selected  for  training,  superior  graduates  may 

200 


AND   THE    LARGER   LIFE 

be  expected ;  but  you  cannot,  in  any  three  or 
four  years  of  training,  make  a  refined  lady 
out  of  a  girl  who  is  devoid  of  some  essential 
refinement  in  her  nature.  These  are  axioms, 
but  wholesome  to  be  repeated  now  and  then. 
It  is,  however,  positive  that  a  large  part  of 
the  peculiar  superiority  of  the  graduates  is  due 
to  the  very  nature  of  their  drill  and  work. 
Think  of  what  the  work  is,  and  of  its  spiritual 
influence.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
her  course  the  pupil  must  have  the  weal,  for 
comfort  and  health  and  even  life,  of  others 
as  her  constant  care  and  duty.  Her  service 
is  essentially  one  of  unselfishness,  and  she  has 
little  time  or  encouragement  for  trifling  aims. 
She  knows  that  the  eyes  of  the  public,  the 
doctors,  her  teachers,  her  fellows,  and  the  pa- 
tients are  upon  her.  The  strain  upon  her  is 
so  severe  that  at  first  it  is  often  extremely  try- 
ing to  the  health  of  the  pupil,  more  so  than  has 
been  witnessed  in  any  other  sort  of  school  for 
women  in  the  history  of  the  world — sometimes 
it  destroys  her  health  completely ;  but  if  she 
does  not  break,  she  rises  high  in  power  and 
efficiency  as  her  training  goes  on.  The  pa- 
tients may  look  to  her  for  strength  and  com- 
fort— they  sometimes  lean  on  her  in  sorrow, 
and  this  is  an  influence  that  usually  makes 
even    crude    human    nature    grow    in    grace. 

201 


THE   TRAINED   NURSE 

Then,  the  nurse  in  the  absence  of  the  doctor 
is  solely  responsible  for  the  patient,  and  in 
some  measure  she  shares  his  responsibility 
also,  and  sometimes  her  part  of  it  is  appalling. 
She  shares  with  the  physician  the  duty  to  hold 
the  interests  and  secrets  of  the  patients  as  in- 
violable. A  mistake  at  her  hands  is  not  a  sim- 
ple classroom  blunder — it  may  cause  a  death. 
If  she  can  bear  all  this  responsibility,  the  thing 
happens  that  comes  in  the  experience  of  most 
human  beings  under  similar  strain :  she  stands 
erect  and  grows  in  poise  and  moral  stature ; 
temptations  to  littleness  and  meanness  grow 
fewer,  and  her  vision  of  the  real  worth  of  hu- 
man character  grows  broader  and  more  accu- 
rate. She  learns  what  is  the  dross  of  human 
nature,  to  be  rejected  and  forgotten  as  soon  as 
possible,  and  what  the  virtues  to  tie  to  and 
be  encouraged  by.  And  her  appreciation  of 
childhood  and  flowers  and  music  and  all  clean- 
ness enlarges  rather  than  lessens;  her  judg- 
ments grow  more  temperate  and  sane — and 
so  she  makes  a  career  worth  living  for  and 
worth  dying  for.  And  she  often  finally  dies 
in  the  belief  that  she  has  been  a  poor  forgotten 
cog  in  a  great  wheel,  whose  parts  are  easily 
replaced,  instead  of  what  she  truly  is,  a  potent 
influence  toward  the  betterment  of  women 
and  men  the  world  over. 

202 


AND   THE    LARGER    LIFE 

The  graduates  here  present  are  about  to 
enter  a  new  profession,  that  has  been  born  out 
of  a  new  and  better  dispensation,  and  has 
grown  to  honor  within  the  memory  of  most 
of  them.  It  is  no  small  achievement  to  have 
done  this.  If  the  event  is  not  sufficiently  novel 
to  be  surprising,  it  is  ground  for  congratula- 
tion that  they  stand  where  they  do  to-day  as  a 
result  of  work  and  trial  and  struggle  and  per- 
haps grief — and  after  severe  natural  and  fac- 
titious selection.  If  anyone  thinks  that  the 
struggle  was  not  hard  enough  and  the  selec- 
tion not  sufficiently  severe,  let  him  understand 
that  probably  their  successors  will  find  these 
progressively  more  terrible.  This  is  the  first 
harvest  of  these  graduates — ^the  second  will 
be  their  professional  success,  if  that  shall  ever 
come  to  pass. 

The  greater  fact  is  that  they  to-day  enter  a 
company  of  women  who  have  been  educated 
in  a  new  kind  of  knowledge,  and  a  new  art, 
which  is  of  the  greatest  usefulness  for  any 
woman  in  any  work  or  walk  of  life.  It  will 
be  enormously  valuable  to  every  one  of  them, 
even  should  she  never  do  a  day's  work  of 
nursing  outside  of  her  own  home.  Besides, 
it  gives  them  the  ability  to  look  down,  little 
or  much,  on  most  of  other  womankind.  Van- 
ity and  conceit  over  this  fact  would  be  unbe- 

203 


THE   TRAINED    NURSE 

coming  anyway,  and  such  an  ignoble  emotion 
will  be  smothered  when  they  reflect,  as  they 
must,  that,  whether  they  pursue  the  profession 
or  not,  they  have  a  large  responsibility  which 
they  can  never  evade  so  long  as  they  live,  to 
maintain  that  reputation  of  their  guild  which 
their  predecessors  have  already  placed  high, 
to  the  end  that  woman  may  have  larger  lib- 
erties and  opportunities,  and  may  earn  more 
honor,  with  no  harm  but  always  benefit  to  the 
social  life  of  the  race. 

Nor  are  good  nursing  and  good  conduct 
enough  for  this  duty  that  is  upon  them.  They 
are  a  living  proclamation  that  women,  espe- 
cially this  stamp  of  women,  shall  also  know 
somewhat.  And  knowledge  accumulates  and 
changes  with  time.  They  cannot  and  must  not 
stop  in  their  intellectual  growth.  They  must 
read,  observe,  and  think,  and  increase  in  wis- 
dom as  knowledge  advances. 


204 


J.  Ills     UUUIV     IK     JJUXj     Uil      Llie     IctSU     Uctl/C    OUO/llipCU.      UCIUW 


V  ;  9    m 


93tj         OlSCHARGE-uW 


■m  L-9 


1695        Bridge   - 


House  health.    _    3   1158  "00672 


lithY  1  9    1930 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRAR\ 


AA    000  503  251 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORi^iA 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


illl 


